Kevin Durant has issued an apology as well as an explanation regarding the twitter mishap from a few days ago, in which he bashed his former Thunder teammates and head coach, Billy Donovan.
Speaking on a panel at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2017 today, KD said he enjoys using Twitter to engage with his fans, but sometimes he can get a bit carried away. While he doesn't regret clapping back at the trolls or interacting with his fans, he did say he was "childish" and "idiotic" for using his former coaches name and the organization he used to play for.
He'll still be interacting with his fans, but for the time being he's going to keep his focus on playing basketball.
"I use Twitter to engage with the fans. I think it’s a great way to engage with bb fans. But I happened to take it a little too far, that’s what happens sometimes when I get into these basketball debates. What I really love is to just play basketball, and I went a little too far. I don’t regret clapping back at anybody or talking to my fans on Twitter. I do regret using my former coach’s name, and my former organization that I played for. That was childish, that was idiotic, all those type of words. I regret doing that, and I apologized to them for doing that.
I don’t think I ever stop engaging with my fans. I think they really enjoy it, and I think it’s a good way to connect us all. But, I will scale back a little bit right now, just focus on playing basketball. So, I want to move on from that. It was tough to deal with yesterday, I was really upset with myself. But I definitely want to move on and keep playing basketball. But I still want to interact with my fans as well."
Durant was outed for having secret burner accounts on social media after he sent out some tweets regarding his former Thunder teammates and head coach. On Sunday night, a twitter user asked Durant to give "one legitimate reason for leaving OKC other than getting a championship," to which @KDTrey5 responded,
“He didn’t like the organization or playing for Billy Donovan. His roster wasn’t that good, it was just him and Russ.”
“Imagine taking Russ off that team. See how bad they were. KD can’t win a championship with those cats.”
After his apology while on the TechCrunch panel, Durant expanded on how upset he was by his mistake. Per USA Today,
“I played a little too much, and that (expletive) really hurt me,” Durant, who first addressed the situation on a TechCrunch panel about athletes and branding, told USA TODAY Sports afterward. “To know that I affected Billy Donovan and the Thunder – like I love those people and I don’t never (want to hurt them).
“That was just me being a total (expletive) idiot. I own up to it. I want to move on from it. It probably hit me probably harder than what everybody (thought). Everybody else was telling me to relax, to snap out of it, but I was really, really upset with myself more than anything. It’s not the fact that people were talking about me, because I deserve that, but I’m just more upset with myself that I let myself go that far, you know what I was saying? It was a joke to me at first. I was doing it all summer, and it went too deep. I went too hard… I haven’t slept in two days, two nights. I haven’t ate. It’s crazy, because I feel so (expletive) pissed at myself and I’m mad that I brought someone into it.”
You can check out video footage of Durant's explanation below.
https://twitter.com/_/status/910209768274272256