therealbig3 wrote:Don’t think he gets it. Wish Grady would have told him that many people are saying it came off as homophobic. Because his response came off as tone deaf to me, like he doesn’t realize why people are making it a big deal...it’s not just because “uh oh, he used bad words”.
I feel like this has a been a massive failure by the Nets front office to sit KD down and educate him on why he, as a beloved athlete and the face of the franchise, needs to be more thoughtful about issues like this.
He clearly was using the rhetoric not to attack the LGBTQA community but to demean Michael Rappaport...yet at the same time, it's clear that he doesn't get why him using homophobic slurs to insult someone is still harmful especially coming from someone of his stature. I don't think what he said with Grady remotely even shows that he even understands that. That's the part that bugs me. There are people within the Nets organization being paid six figures to respond to PR nightmares like this and the best response is to let KD go on TV and say "sorry you had to see that"? Is Joe Tsai okay with that? Sean Marks? Come on now. The Nets can do better.
Saying or releasing a statement like "I now recognize that the words that I used may have offended and are harmful to members of our LGBT community, and I am sorry and did not mean to hurt or offend anyone. I will do better to educate myself going forward regarding the use of certain language and how it is not acceptable regardless of context." would have nipped this in the bud.
The sad part is, I don't think KD is a hateful person, but I think he, like a lot of other people (and you can clearly see this from the type of responses given here), don't realize that insinuating that someone is gay as an insult is even a bad thing to do. It's like learned behavior that he hasn't grown out of.
Full disclosure: I'm not innocent of this stuff either, when I was younger I called people the same word he called Rappaport, or I've said stupid stuff like "yo that's so gay" to describe something negatively. I was never taught that was wrong. However, I
learned that what I was saying was wrong, and I was being disrespectful to not only people that i didn't even know, but to my own family members and friends who are gay and lesbian themselves. I didn't want to be that guy hurting people so I took the time to listen and educate myself. Empathy goes a long way, but in this situation here, I am seeing none of it from Kevin Durant and that is frankly disappointing.