In an in-depth interview with San Francisco Magazine’s Jon Steinberg, Durant and his agent/business partner Rich Kleiman shared the extreme remorse the NBA star felt after leaving the Thunder.
Durant said the regret started days after he signed with the Warriors, while he was in China with Kleiman on a promotional tour with Nike Basketball.
Durant said the blowback from his decision briefly messed him up.
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“That was before I met anybody from the Warriors and dove into the culture. I was basically on my own,” Durant told Steinberg.
Kleiman said a panicked Durant called him early one morning from his hotel room in China.
“I was up at 6 a.m. and he [Durant] calls me and says, ‘Yo, are you up?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, what’s up?’ And he’s like [yelling], ‘Why the f— did you let me do this to my life?’"
“That hotel was rock bottom,” Durant told Steinberg.
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Durant said he started to feel better about his decision during his time with Team USA at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
“I was worried about how my peers were going to feel about me,” he told Steinberg. “In my profession, that’s the only thing I care about. So when I was talking to Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan, and they were like, ‘Congrats, man, do your thing,’ and Paul George was like, ‘Congrats, man, I am happy for you,’ and Kevin Love was like, ‘Shoot, do what you gotta do,’ that eased my mind a little bit, because I want that from my peers.”
Fast forward to today; Durant is positive he made the right decision.
Winning an NBA title and a Finals MVP award has a way of disproving any doubts.
