"I was like, man, that was a real emotional moment for me, and you making a joke about it! Like: Damn. Y’all don’t really believe in shit. You don’t have no morals or nothing. You don’t care about nothing but just making fun."

How are you supposed to act in the world, when people feel entitled even to a moment like that?

"I was serious as hell saying that, you know what I’m saying?"

The guy who’s supposed to be the nicest guy in the league exhales.

"But after a while, it’s all good."

What matters is that he said it.

He came offstage and his mom said, "I didn’t know you felt that way about me!"

He rejects his nickname, the Slim Reaper, as ungodly. He’s not here to be the guy of, "I guess, death," as he once said. Grew up in full fear of God, in fact. He was raised to think: "If I do something wrong, I’m going to hell." Then he met Carl Lentz, who ministers to Justin Bieber and sometimes leads prayers before Knicks games. Carl taught him God was about love. Before, "I felt like I had to follow the Ten Commandments. But we don’t live by that no more. We live by the blood of Jesus. That’s how I feel."

But then you watch him enter the arena one Monday night in Oakland to play the Golden State Warriors, something singularly lethal moving through the corridors of Oracle Arena—love isn’t the first word that comes to mind. "When I’m on the court," he says, "I’m a total asshole. I’m a dick. I don’t talk to the other team. If I fall on somebody, I throw them to the ground, I’m not helping them up. I just feel like it’s a war mode. Like, they’re trying to kill me, but I gotta kill them before they kill me."

How do people not see this? he wonders. If people only knew how he really felt about things when the game is involved. This is a person who can hardly watch basketball when he’s not playing it. "I just don’t like other teams or other players. I can’t sit there. I feel like I’m supporting them by watching it. I hope you have a bad game. Because I’m such a hater! I thought it was a bad trait I had. I was like, Man, am I jealous? Why do I hate this guy? But I hope both of the teams lose! That’s how I feel."

Anyway, the Thunder get blown out in Oakland. As they will again, a couple of nights later, in Sacramento, before rebounding at home against the Utah Jazz. Strange season for the Thunder and Kevin Durant. Not quite right so far. Going back to Team USA this summer, which Durant was on, until one day he wasn’t. A refreshingly self-interested decision, from a guy whose brand is never being self-interested. "I just didn’t feel like playing. Simple. I was good, mentally, physically. I just wanted to have the rest of my summer to myself." Fair enough. But then he got hurt anyway. Durant fractured his right foot, missed seventeen games, came back, lit it up, injured his ankle, missed six more games, came back again. The Thunder now destined to spend the season scrapping just for an eight seed in a conference they were favored to win.

And lurking over it all, the question of where he’ll be after his contract runs out in 2016. Everyone jockeying for his attention, his devotion, his loyalty. Loyalty being a word Kevin Durant has had to become wise to. He heard the Sterling tapes like everyone else. "When that came out, we was just like, ’Oh, so that’s how they feel about us?’ " All this rhetoric about team, about loyalty. And then guys like Sterling basically acting in private like their players are property. "When players do stuff that benefits them, they’re looked at as unloyal, selfish," Durant says. "But when a team decides to go the other way and cut a player, or not bring him back or not re-sign him, it’s what’s best for the team, and that’s cool. But what we do is frowned upon, you know?"