When Kevin Durant announced last summer that he was signing with the Golden State Warriors, it sent shock waves across the league. It was a similar moment to when in a nationally televised event in 2010, LeBron James made his infamous decision to sign with the Miami Heat.
"The Decision" was such a controversial event, that even Durant reacted to it, taking to Twitter to express his views about the number of players that all of sudden wanted to play for the Heat now that James, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade joined up.
Now everybody wanna play for the heat and the Lakers? Let's go back to being competitive and going at these peoples!
— Kevin Durant (@KDTrey5) July 16, 2010
Durant's tweet could be seen as a shot at James and also now seems hypocritical because he left Oklahoma City to form a super team in Golden State with Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green. But in a podcast conversation with The Ringer's Bill Simmons, Durant says the tweet wasn't directed at James at all. Durant was simply referencing a "fake article," where former NBA great Penny Hardaway said he wanted to join the Heat.
From The Ringer:
Durant: Let me clear this up, because a lot of people talk to me about [it and say] I took a shot at him on Twitter. If you go back and look at when I posted that, I posted that later in the month, you want to know why?
Penny Hardaway came out and said, "I would love to play for the Heat, I think I could help them win the championship." And I'm like, "Come on, Penny. You've been out of the game. I played against you my rookie year, it's like three years later, man. What are you doing?" But it was a fake article. So I tweeted that. And now everybody's like, "Well, you was criticizing LeBron." I signed an extension right after LeBron decided to go to Miami and a lot of people asked me about that, I said, "Cool, for [the Heat]. We play them three times, I can't wait to play them, it's going to be cool."
I didn't criticize him, I was criticizing Penny Hardaway in this fake article I read. So a lot of people took that and ran with it.
Ah so that clears everything up.
It is strange however, that Durant is saying he read a fake article, when Hardaway did actually say he wanted to join the Heat in an interview on ESPN's Outside the Lines. But perhaps Durant is saying that Hardaway just wanted to grab headlines by saying he was going to attempt a comeback to join the Heat.
Either way, close to seven years later, Durant is pretty adamant that he didn't take a shot at James.