Kevin Durant opens up about leaving Golden State, how he really feels about kerr’s Offense and his thoughts on OKC

The world of sports is and always will be the best reality show known to man. Every month the news cycle is filled with controversies that create memorable narratives for die-hard, casual, and non-fans alike.

Recently the football world was blessed with the Antonio Brown Saga, that seemingly rocked three franchises. From Brown requested a trade from the Pittsburgh Steelers, to being traded to the Oakland Raiders-- much to his disliking-- to Brown then finding ways to refuse to practice with the Raiders, forcing Oakland to release him. From there he signed with the NFL's most polarizing champions, the New England Patriots.

While New England fans are thrilled, Pittsburgh and Oakland fans are distraught over the deal. Although for the Bay Area, this isn't their first run-in with a drama-filled break-up. Throughout the last three summers, Warriors fans have had the luxury of being on top of the NBA. With that, they've also withstood the consistent news cycle of rumors involving their 2x Finals MVP Kevin Durant.

Durant's addition to the team came with backlash from analysts, current and retired players, and fans. Damien Lillard was among the pack to criticize Durant's move.

"I'm not joining nobody," said Lillard. "I would not win a championship before I go and team up and do all that. Unless it was something, I couldn't control."

The drama escalated in a surprising fashion when Durant responded to fans criticizing him while speaking in the third person. This leads the basketball world to discover Durant's burner accounts. Durant's tenure at Golden State brought two championships, where he won Finals MVP both times, but also brought an excess of controversy that took a toll on everyone-- especially Kevin Durant.

In his final months as a Warrior, he took the time to remind reporters during the team's first-round series with the Clippers that he is Kevin Durant, saying, "I'm Kevin Durant. Y'all know who I am."

With months passing since the star's Bay Area exit and relocation to Brooklyn, we got another glimpse at who Kevin Durant is. In his recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, Durant explained his feelings towards the NBA, fans, and social media. While the piece primarily gives fans a glimpse into Durant's mindset—which seems to be a hot topic in the NBA world—the article provides a broader outlook on the experience of being a superstar.

It's easy to analyze and critique players for just about anything. Fans attacked Stephen Curry in July for defending his wife Ayesha Curry on Instagram—something that has not a hint to do with basketball. Through their extraordinary plays between the lines, we often forget that our favorite-- or least favorite-- players are human too. Durant's interview with WSJ dives into that concept.

"What Durant doesn't like, what unnerves him, is when raw hatred poses as fandom," Durant told J.R. Moehringer. "We talk about mental health a lot. We only talk about it when it comes to players. We need to talk about it when it comes to executives, media, fans."

From spray painting his home's for sale sign to burning his former OKC jersey, Durant has seen the highest levels of harassment NBA fans have to offer. He isn't alone in this sense, Lebron James, Isiah Thomas, Jimmy Butler have also seen fans at their rarest forms. While the jersey burning, anti-player mobility, videos make good for Twitter likes and Instagram followers, the videos can deter athletes from creating emotional ties to cities.

Think about it, as an NBA player, or any professional athlete in a team sport; you sacrifice your body every night to win for the team and city you are signed with. For some, it has a bigger meaning, like Lebron's emotional pour to Cleveland after winning the 2016 NBA Championship. Sometimes players adapt, and the city they are drafted by becomes their home, like Stephen Curry with the Bay Area. But for some, that connection never comes.

In the case of Kevin Durant that connection may have been foiled by his previous experience with Oklahoma, where the city franchise he basically grew up with, in NBA terms, turned their backs on him after he decided to go elsewhere.

One memory that Durant and his family will never let go is a video of a Thunder fan firing bullets into a No. 35 jersey. While burning a jersey is one thing, bullets are a different form of hate-- especially coming from a community that Durant and half his extended family relocated to, embraced, and gave a million dollars to tornado victims. Bullets coming from that community is a different beast that changed Durant's view on attachment.

I'll never be attached to that city again because of that," Durant says. "I eventually wanted to come back to that city and be part of that community and organization, but I don't trust nobody there. That shit must have been fake, what they was doing. The organization, the GM, I ain't talked to none of those people, even had a nice exchange with those people, since I left."

So when it comes to the Kevin Durant Saga in the Bay Area, you have to take this into consideration. The basketball world loves to say that Durant never embraced the essence of the Warriors' culture, but never comes to speculate why. Maybe his prior experience made him shield himself.

This isn't saying that Durant doesn't have love for the Bay, because he told J.R. Moehringer that he does. He expressed that he was conflicted about leaving.

"I came in there wanting to be part of a group, wanting to be part of a family, and definitely felt accepted," he says. "But I'll never be one of those guys. I didn't get drafted there. Steph Curry, obviously drafted there. Andre Iguodala, won the first Finals, first championship. Klay Thompson, drafted there. Draymond Green, drafted there. And the rest of the guys kind of rehabilitated their careers there. So me? Shit, how you going to rehabilitate me? What you going to teach me? How can you alter anything in my basketball life? I got an MVP already. I got scoring titles."

The media, along with fans, helped further create the sense of Them vs. Me when it came to Durant's time as a Warrior.

"As time went on," Durant says, "I started to realize I'm just different from the rest of the guys. It's not a bad thing. Just my circumstances and how I came up in the league. And on top of that, the media always looked at it like KD and the Warriors. So it's like nobody could get a full acceptance of me there."

On top of this, Durant also dispelled the speculations of his argument with Draymond Green being the reason for his exit. He explained that they were good before and were good after the spat, calling it a "bullshit argument," he says, "that meant nothing. Absolutely nothing. We were good before it. We were great."

More than anything, his exit, just like his arrival, was strictly based off of basketball. In his eyes, the group had hit their ceiling.

"The motion offense we run in Golden State, it only works to a certain point," Durant said. "We can totally rely on only our system for maybe the first two rounds. Then the next two rounds we're going to have to mix in individual play. We've got to throw teams off because they're smarter in that round of playoffs. So now I had to dive into my bag, deep, to create stuff on my own, off the dribble, isos, pick-and-rolls, more so than let the offense create my points for me." He wanted to go someplace where he'd be free to hone that sort of improvisational game throughout the regular season."

Durant's time in the Bay Area was great, he says, but because of media speculation and fan anxiety, he says, "It didn't feel as great as it could have been."