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Aunt Pearl made Kevin sandwiches and snacks. When the kids slept over they’d all pile onto a makeshift mattress next to her bed. Except for Kevin, who would climb up, off the floor, and sleep in bed right next to her.

When Kevin was 11, Aunt Pearl died. It happened in front of him. She had late-stage lung cancer. One day she got up to use the bathroom but never made it back — she collapsed in the hall, struggling to breathe, and started coughing up blood, so much blood that it gushed out of her and she died, right there, in the house. E.M.T.s came and cleaned her up, then laid her back in bed. Everyone was waiting for the coroner. Kevin walked over and climbed into the bed, as he always did, and lay down. Just lay there next to Aunt Pearl, keeping her company. His grandmother, seeing her grandson in bed with the body of her sister, asked if Kevin was OK. “I’m not afraid of Aunt Pearl,” he said.


One day when Durant was 7, Wanda took him to the Seat Pleasant rec center. She did it for much the same reason she used to strap him into a stroller: Maybe basketball could hold him steady, could keep him from bouncing around in the chaos of the world. Durant remembers entering that gym as a full-on spiritual awakening. It was as if the gates of heaven opened. Holy light flooding down. Angels singing.

In that gym, almost immediately, he became a sort of basketball monk. On a basketball court, Kevin Durant finally made sense to himself. The game drew on every aspect of his being: the watching, the moving, the thinking, the feeling. It was a deep spiritual channel, a way to align his body and his mind. Basketball brought him instant mentors, the father figures his daily life lacked.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/02/magazine/kevin-durant-brooklyn-nets.html

Paradise wrote:Wow. It also explains where the 7 number comes in.

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Aunt Pearl made Kevin sandwiches and snacks. When the kids slept over they’d all pile onto a makeshift mattress next to her bed. Except for Kevin, who would climb up, off the floor, and sleep in bed right next to her.

When Kevin was 11, Aunt Pearl died. It happened in front of him. She had late-stage lung cancer. One day she got up to use the bathroom but never made it back — she collapsed in the hall, struggling to breathe, and started coughing up blood, so much blood that it gushed out of her and she died, right there, in the house. E.M.T.s came and cleaned her up, then laid her back in bed. Everyone was waiting for the coroner. Kevin walked over and climbed into the bed, as he always did, and lay down. Just lay there next to Aunt Pearl, keeping her company. His grandmother, seeing her grandson in bed with the body of her sister, asked if Kevin was OK. “I’m not afraid of Aunt Pearl,” he said.


One day when Durant was 7, Wanda took him to the Seat Pleasant rec center. She did it for much the same reason she used to strap him into a stroller: Maybe basketball could hold him steady, could keep him from bouncing around in the chaos of the world. Durant remembers entering that gym as a full-on spiritual awakening. It was as if the gates of heaven opened. Holy light flooding down. Angels singing.

In that gym, almost immediately, he became a sort of basketball monk. On a basketball court, Kevin Durant finally made sense to himself. The game drew on every aspect of his being: the watching, the moving, the thinking, the feeling. It was a deep spiritual channel, a way to align his body and his mind. Basketball brought him instant mentors, the father figures his daily life lacked.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/02/magazine/kevin-durant-brooklyn-nets.html

Below are excerpts from the interview. [Source]

"But the Durant I met was not at all a brand ambassador. Instead he lowered himself, in slow motion, onto a long couch and asked, sincerely, “What do you want to talk about?” I said, only 20 percent joking, the meaning of life. This seemed to make him happy. We proceeded to sit there and talk for a very long time, sinking deeper and deeper into the couch, about his childhood and Chesapeake Bay and meditation and crabs and Twitter. "

...

"This was all classic Durant. In a sports world defined by tough-guy posturing and bulletproof messaging, he has always come off as something else: a thinker and a searcher and a wandering soul. In interviews, he will abandon the script of jock clichés and drop right into existential dread. “I go to sleep at night, like, ‘Am I going to be alone forever?’” he once told Zach Baron of GQ. And to Michael Lee of The Athletic: “I’ve been roaming my whole life. I never had no stable environment. Ever. Ever. Since I woke up.” Durant has spoken publicly about how important it is to cry. If Michael Jordan were a Dostoyevsky character, he would be Kevin Durant."

" “The world is bigger than my little box,” Durant told me. “I’m not going to be playing this game forever. So I can’t be expected to stay in this box.” He laughed. “Like: ‘This is the K.D. box.’ Who gives a [expletive]? It’s been billions of people on this earth. We really are small, if you look at it from a universe perspective.”

I asked Durant if he had ever been to therapy. He said no. But he told me he meditates constantly, every day. Not formally, cross-legged, like a Buddhist. He meditates just by doing normal things. Shooting a free throw, he said, is meditation. Conversation with the right person is meditation. It feels like meditation, to Durant, to drive through New York City in his Tesla, blasting music, looking at the swirls of people, crossing the Brooklyn Bridge on his way to the practice facility.

Durant is always searching, in all the noise, for relief, simplicity, stillness.

“There’s a lot of stuff that we get distracted by, or we chasing, to make us feel a certain way,” Durant said. “When it’s really basic. We should just be experiencing everything as human beings, as much as we can. Being normal amongst each other.” "

I asked him if his brain exploded every time he opened the app.

“My brain doesn’t explode,” he said.

“How does it not explode?” I asked.

“Because I’m a very centered, balanced person,” he said. “I understand why these people are doing this. If I didn’t understand, then I probably would go crazy.”

What Durant understands, he explained, is that the people writing to him aren’t actually writing to him. Kevin Durant, to them, is just an abstraction, a guy on the TV, a figment of their imaginations. So what they are doing is projecting onto him the pain or hatred or longing that they actually feel about real things in their own lives. This is why he likes to write back. He wants to show them that he is an actual human, just like them, with his own fears and hatreds and longings. He wants to connect with them on that level. Even the angry ones, he believes, have good hearts. Hatred, he told me, is just another form of passion, and therefore a sign that you’re really alive.

gigantes wrote:I read some completely different highlights on Reddit, but either way I'm impressed:

Below are excerpts from the interview. [Source]

"But the Durant I met was not at all a brand ambassador. Instead he lowered himself, in slow motion, onto a long couch and asked, sincerely, “What do you want to talk about?” I said, only 20 percent joking, the meaning of life. This seemed to make him happy. We proceeded to sit there and talk for a very long time, sinking deeper and deeper into the couch, about his childhood and Chesapeake Bay and meditation and crabs and Twitter. "

...

"This was all classic Durant. In a sports world defined by tough-guy posturing and bulletproof messaging, he has always come off as something else: a thinker and a searcher and a wandering soul. In interviews, he will abandon the script of jock clichés and drop right into existential dread. “I go to sleep at night, like, ‘Am I going to be alone forever?’” he once told Zach Baron of GQ. And to Michael Lee of The Athletic: “I’ve been roaming my whole life. I never had no stable environment. Ever. Ever. Since I woke up.” Durant has spoken publicly about how important it is to cry. If Michael Jordan were a Dostoyevsky character, he would be Kevin Durant."

" “The world is bigger than my little box,” Durant told me. “I’m not going to be playing this game forever. So I can’t be expected to stay in this box.” He laughed. “Like: ‘This is the K.D. box.’ Who gives a [expletive]? It’s been billions of people on this earth. We really are small, if you look at it from a universe perspective.”

I asked Durant if he had ever been to therapy. He said no. But he told me he meditates constantly, every day. Not formally, cross-legged, like a Buddhist. He meditates just by doing normal things. Shooting a free throw, he said, is meditation. Conversation with the right person is meditation. It feels like meditation, to Durant, to drive through New York City in his Tesla, blasting music, looking at the swirls of people, crossing the Brooklyn Bridge on his way to the practice facility.

Durant is always searching, in all the noise, for relief, simplicity, stillness.

“There’s a lot of stuff that we get distracted by, or we chasing, to make us feel a certain way,” Durant said. “When it’s really basic. We should just be experiencing everything as human beings, as much as we can. Being normal amongst each other.” "

I asked him if his brain exploded every time he opened the app.

“My brain doesn’t explode,” he said.

“How does it not explode?” I asked.

“Because I’m a very centered, balanced person,” he said. “I understand why these people are doing this. If I didn’t understand, then I probably would go crazy.”

What Durant understands, he explained, is that the people writing to him aren’t actually writing to him. Kevin Durant, to them, is just an abstraction, a guy on the TV, a figment of their imaginations. So what they are doing is projecting onto him the pain or hatred or longing that they actually feel about real things in their own lives. This is why he likes to write back. He wants to show them that he is an actual human, just like them, with his own fears and hatreds and longings. He wants to connect with them on that level. Even the angry ones, he believes, have good hearts. Hatred, he told me, is just another form of passion, and therefore a sign that you’re really alive.

Even if he still doesn't quite grasp (or agree) why people are still mad at him for jumping to the Dubs, he's quite an interesting guy. On with some impressive self-awareness and humility IMO.