In the days following the announcement of his decision to leave the Oklahoma City Thunder, Durant and his agent, Rich Kleiman, traveled to China for a tour sponsored by Nike Basketball. During the week-long trip, the negative responses about his decision to leave OKC weighed on him.
“Because I truly had invested everything I had into the people I played for … and for those people that I know and love and trust to turn their back on me after I was fully invested in them, it was just … more than I could take. I was upset,” he told Jon Steinberg of San Francisco Magazine.
“That was before I met anybody from the Warriors and dove into the culture. I was basically on my own,” Durant said.
He then detailed a moment from a hotel stay in China, when he called Kleiman’s room and grilled him about letting him make the decision to sign with the Warriors.
“That hotel was rock bottom,” Durant said.
Despite this self-professed low point, the Warriors’ forward shared that, by the time he joined Team USA for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, he had started to put things in perspective again. And reassurance from his peers played a big part in his turnaround.
“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,” Durant said
Durant went on to average 25.1 points, 8.3 rebounds and 4.8 assists in his first season with Golden State.
Courtesy:ESPN.com
