National Basketball Association

Kevin Durant has every right to answer his critics

Updated Apr. 27, 2022 8:52 p.m. ET

By Melissa Rohlin
FOX Sports NBA Writer

He took to social media to defend himself. The audacity! The nerve!

The Brooklyn Nets superstar is ridiculed whenever he fights back on social media. The masses seem to find something unsettling about a guy who earned $41 million this season feeling the need to enter the media fray. Shouldn't he be above the banality of the discourse that surrounds him? Isn't it petty that he concerns himself with his own narrative?

Only thing is, it's not.

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There's something supremely unfair about that. Fans are allowed to drag athletes' names through the mud. Talking heads are paid to denigrate them in front of millions of viewers. But if an athlete opens his mouth to defend himself, he's slammed for not taking the high road?

The latest iteration of this saga happened after Charles Barkley called out Durant on TNT's "Inside the NBA" on Sunday, as Brooklyn was about to get swept out of the playoffs by the Boston Celtics.

Barkley argued that Durant was a "bus rider" when he won two championships with Golden State in 2017 and '18 while playing alongside Steph Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green. And as a "bus rider," Barkley said, he's not a true champion.

"See, you guys always talk about that championship stuff to me," Barkley said. "I try to tell y'all: All these bus riders, they don't mean nothin' to me. If you ain't drivin' the bus, don't walk around talkin' 'bout you a champion."

Obviously, that comment wasn't going to sit well with Durant, who led the Warriors in postseason scoring in 2017 (28.5 points per game) and 2018 (29) and was named Finals MVP both years. It was definitely not going to sit well coming from Barkley, who never won a championship.

Durant responded Tuesday on Instagram by posting four photos of Barkley standing next to superstar teammates, including one of him walking alongside Moses Malone when they played for the 1984-85 Philadelphia 76ers.

Wrote Durant: "Where would chuck be without the big homies."

If nothing else, the exchange was great fodder for "Inside the NBA," as Twitter user Rob Perez noted. Perez, who has more than 900,000 followers, joked that the show is going to respond to Durant with "an army of producers experienced in the art of pettiness."

Durant agreed.

Since then, Durant has been getting absolutely demolished on social media.

He dared to defend himself? The hubris. Shouldn't he be focusing on how to get his team past the first round of the playoffs? And above all else, not only did he give himself a nickname, but he chose that nickname.

Regardless of whether Durant was being literal or facetious in calling himself "the god," he has a right to defend himself, considering it's totally inaccurate to call him a "bus rider." And is the nickname really such a problem? We're all cool with Chris Paul being called "The Point God" even though he has never won a championship — because we gave him the nickname.

The truth is TV personalities give players nicknames all the time, and no one bats an eye.

One Twitter user questioned how Durant could call himself "the god" after his team, which was favored to win a title at the start of the season, endured such an epic collapse.

Durant responded by wondering why people were so upset.

Part of the unwritten contract of being a professional athlete, especially one who makes more than $40 million, is opening yourself up to public ridicule. Athletes are expected to gracefully take it, to not let it affect their performance, to let their play do the talking.

But they're also expected to take the podium and talk about themselves in their most vulnerable moments. If they're underperforming, they're expected to explain why right after a highly charged game. They're expected to always have wisdom and clarity … and share it with the rest of the world.

We expect athletes to perform and speak when instructed. When they break that mold, there's collective, angry finger-wagging. But Durant, he's shining a magnifying glass on these unwritten rules and demanding they be altered.

From the start of his career, Durant has refused to operate within others' confines.

He has made burner accounts to defend himself. (When he did that, he was accused of being a coward.) He has used his own accounts to defend himself. (When he does that, he's accused of being soft and emotional.)

There's no winning for him.

He wants to stand up for himself, to call out perceived hypocrisy and to shine a light on the hate that athletes are expected to endure from TV analysts, columnists and fans.

Is there anything wrong with that?

Or is there something wrong with us that we can dish it out, but we can't take it?

Melissa Rohlin is an NBA writer for FOX Sports. She previously covered the league for Sports Illustrated, the Los Angeles Times, the Bay Area News Group and the San Antonio Express-News. Follow her on Twitter at @melissarohlin.