Posted in The Soapbox
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09/17 2010

Is The National Media Going To Hit The Snooze On Kevin Durant?

Posted by Zach Harper.

U.S. Kevin Durant celebrates his team's victory against Turkey at the end of the FIBA Basketball World Championship final game in Istanbul September 12, 2010. REUTERS/Jeff Haynes (TURKEY - Tags: SPORT BASKETBALL)

While Q scores for LeBron James are plummeting and while people still seem to hate Kobe Bryant as much as they always have, Kevin Durant has become the NBA’s media darling during the course of this summer.

Even though LeBron was never exactly loved by EVERY NBA fans, he was still a lot more popular than he was hated, and everybody was pining for him to take his talents to (fill in the blank) when he finally made his free agency decision. Unfortunately for Knicks, Bulls, Nets, Clippers and, most importantly, Cavaliers fans he decided to go team up with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh to form a Three Amigos type of deal in South Beach. The outcry against him was swift and heavy. Jerseys burned in the streets of Cleveland that probably already had garbage bins on fire and the vitriol spewed his way for not choosing someone’s favorite team in order to be THE MAN (see: fans, Bulls and Knicks) flowed like wine.

This left a void in everybody’s basketball hearts. There has to always be a person that is loved and pitted against a bitter rival. How else could you explain why so many people gave a damn whether Kobe or LeBron was the best player in the league over the past two seasons? You have to pit someone against the player that is hated. Since Kobe and LeBron are now both hated, everyone has made their way to the Kevin Durant love train.

There’s no problem necessarily with loving Kevin Durant as a player. He’s one of the nicest guys in the league from what is portrayed and he reaches out to the fans through Twitter, social media and other endeavors in a seemingly genuine way. Tack on the fact that he’s the youngest scoring champ in the history of the NBA, has Bill Simmons backing his every move and just turned a 23-win OKC Thunder team into a legitimate threat to the Lakers dynasty by just being better than every other 21-year old there has ever been…and you have plenty of reasons to swoon over him.

The only way Kevin Durant could have hurt his stock this summer would have been to switch from Team USA to Team Iran and knock off his fellow countrymen in the gold medal game during the FIBA World Championships. Instead, he took the proverbial torch from the horribly dubbed “Redeem Team” and showed the rest of the world why people in the United States expect our country to win gold in all basketball competitions — because we have the best players and the biggest stars.

Durantula (created by Rob Mahoney and made popular by J.E. Skeets on Yahoo’s Ball Don’t Lie) set the world on fire with said torch. After the USA strolled through group play (except for a little scare against Brazil) and moved past the first round of knockout play with a 55-point win against Angola for old time’s sake, Durant was unleashed on the rest of the world as the most unstoppable offensive force around. He scored 99 points in Team USA’s final three games, including a United States’ FIBA World Championship record of 38 points against Lithuania in the semi-finals. Overall, Kevin Durant averaged 22.7 points per game in just 28.2 minutes per contest. He shot 55% from the field, 45% from 3-point range and 91% at the free throw line.

His performance has caused people to start wondering if he’s not just the best scorer in the world, but the best player in the world.

The national media got to wax poetically over his “heroic” hoops exploits while the rest of the basketball world shook their heads in disbelief at just how good this 21-year old is. This is all very easy to do when we’re stuck in August and September with baseball just about to gear up for the final chaotic push and football kind of getting underway. It’s easy to focus your attention for two weeks to a guy on a team of NBA sort-of All-Stars trying to win a competition that we all feel is rightfully ours.

But what happens when the NBA season starts again?

The Miami Heat will become the story and the defense of the Lakers second straight title will be the sub-story. Outside of that, will anybody in the national media care about Kevin Durant and what he’s meant to the basketball world and basketball fans over this summer break?

They probably won’t care about Durant when Carmelo Anthony is being shopped around like an old bike with new streamers on the handlebars posted on Craig’s List for $50 or concert tickets to Ke$ha. They probably won’t care about Durant when Kevin Garnett swears at an opponent or Jay-Z starts tweeting at Miami games or Ron Artest donates his body to science.

As much as society loves a superhero to go against our most hated villain, what we all love more is two villains trying to sully the great name of basketball. It doesn’t matter that LeBron James made the right career choice or Kobe Bryant is the most dedicated professional to his craft since the guy he tries to imitate on the court every night retired from the NBA. We just see their names and love to hate them because it makes us feel like we’re fighting the good fight or the mediocre fight or awww, fuck it; let’s just have a fight to say we had a fight.

And the national media will buy into that mentality because that’s what gets page views, uniques and daily papers moving off those newspaper stands you don’t get to see on the west coast. Because it’s only important to the die-hard NBA fans, the Thunder faithful and a few people that just love to be contrarians, the national media will forget what Kevin Durant did this summer and make him a bullet point in a notes column when he drops 40+ on the local team.

It’s impossible for the national media to sleep on Kevin Durant because, throughout the summer, we’ve all been made aware of just how good, and important, he is. Because he’s NOT the best player in the league — and probably not even the second or third best player in the NBA — he’s essentially not important on a nationwide scale. It allows him to fade off into semi-obscurity while the rest of us basketball blogging faithful try to convince you of just what exactly it is you’re missing.

It’s a shame too. Kevin Durant is someone who should be a national name and not just a national name when we need the alleged villain to get his comeuppance. It shouldn’t take a superhuman performance from KD or him slaying NBA giants for people to notice just how good he is. We should be prepared to have season-long discussions and celebrations throughout coverage of the NBA season. Instead, he’ll probably just be pushed to the side until we need something different to discuss.

I’m not worried about the national media sleeping on Kevin Durant. I’m just worried they’ll hit the snooze button until they decide he matters again.

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Posted on September 17, 2010 at 11:46AM

 

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  1. Snoozing on Durant | Daily Thunder.com
    09/17 2010

    [...] Zach Harper writing for Press Coverage looks at how the national media has latched on to Kevin Durant The Hero this summer to try and refresh people from LeBron James The Villain. And he makes a point worth repeating: It’s impossible for the national media to sleep on Kevin Durant because, throughout the summer, we’ve all been made aware of just how good, and important, he is. Because he’s NOT the best player in the league — and probably not even the second or third best player in the NBA — he’s essentially not important on a nationwide scale. It allows him to fade off into semi-obscurity while the rest of us basketball blogging faithful try to convince you of just what exactly it is you’re missing. [...]