A five-time NBA All-Star, a four-time scoring champion, a Rookie of the Year, and the league's reigning Most Valuable Player walk into a coffee shop in San Francisco's Mission District as the sun is still burning off the fog, and the cashier says: "Name, please?"

Kevin Durant looks down at her from a vast height, something like relief on his face. Then he turns to me, like: Let me enjoy this.

So I give my name instead. The kind woman behind the counter says the tall gentleman's hot chocolate will be ready momentarily. My coffee, too. Durant says his mom used to wake him up at three in the morning and make him to go to 7-Eleven to get her a coffee. At 10 years old. He was like, Damn, this is what caffeine does to a person? Still doesn't drink it. Prefers hot chocolate—a 26-year-old with the taste buds of a 10-year-old boy.

That's the reputation, right? Basketball freak, a man on the court but still a child off it? Momma's boy. Too nice to hurt anybody, ever.

Well. Not exactly.

Take the conversation we're having right now. Two guys on stools in a coffee shop talking about girls. His heart still not quite right after hurting someone he loved. "I had a fiancée, but...I really didn't know how to, like, love her, you know what I'm saying? We just went our separate ways." Monica Wright, WNBA player, something like a high school sweetheart. One night Kevin got so full of feelings he just up and proposed to her. "We was just hanging out, chilling. And I felt the energy. I felt, I need to do this right now. And I just did it. I was like...We're engaged right now? We're about to get married? So I was just like, cool! I love this girl. But I didn't love her the right way."

Outside this coffee shop, there are multiple millions of people representing multiple millions of dollars—shoe companies, league executives, agents, little kids with big KD posters on their walls—with opinions on what he should and should not be saying at this particular moment. A whole universe bending to be like: Talk about your will to succeed. Your work in the community. How you know what it takes to win.

But what he wants to say right now is this: "I go to sleep at night, like, 'Am I gonna be alone forever?' " A whole ocean of regret. His life too hectic, and too surrounded by money, to trust, let alone love, the next person who comes through that door.

"Am I gonna be alone forever? Am I gonna have kids?"

Almost seven feet tall in a sweat suit, body like God wanted him to be this good.

"I feel like there's no hope. But I still gotta have faith."

A few years ago, he probably wouldn't have said any of this out loud. But he likes himself more than he used to. Likes talking this way. A sad subject, sure, but he's not sad to talk about it. Talking about it is freedom.

 ··

The reigning MVP. Gets picked first or second in the all-galaxy pickup game, depending on how you feel about LeBron. Immortality a championship or two away. Already in that weird place where nothing he says or does belongs just to him. His basic decency—try to find tape of this guy throwing a tantrum, or even rolling his eyes at a coach or a teammate—turned into a flaw (He's too nice to win a championship!) and then, worse, an actual Nike marketing campaign (#KDISNOTNICE). His inner life subject to our feelings of ownership.

For example, the bracingly generous MVP speech he gave last spring. "One of the greatest off-the-floor moments in NBA history," Bill Simmons called it. I agree.

He didn't practice it. Had a piece of paper. Before going onstage, he wrote: "Mom. Teammates."

"Then I had, right under 'Teammates,' there was another bullet point that said 'Russell. [Thunder coach] Scott Brooks. Thank the media. Thank the fans.' "

Gets up in front of the cameras with no real idea of what he's going to say. Looks down at the paper, sees Mom. "And it was like, all right."

I come from a small county outside of Washington, D.C., called PG County....

The tears came pretty soon after that. "I didn't know I was gonna cry. But I never cried as a kid."

He stops. Tells me he just cried today, in fact. "I watched this video about this guy, his son got killed in front of a nightclub in Miami. And he was shouting at his son's murderer and just crying. I just started bawling. And I was just like, man, I've been so emotional since I've grown up. As a kid you're taught not to be emotional. And I feel like I'm starting to let it all out. Every little thing now. So I cried today. And I felt good about it, though. I felt compassionate. I felt, like, loving and caring. I felt good. 

He pauses again. "I think, as a nation, we need to cry with each other. As a world, we need to cry with each other. That shows we care."

Anyway, back to the speech. Thanks his teammates, one by one. Saves Russell Westbrook, his Wile E. Coyote cartoon of a point guard, for last, as if maybe he forgot him entirely.

"I fucked with him a little bit on that," the nicest guy in the league says now, laughing.

I know you guys think I forgot Russ. But I could speak all night about Russell. An emotional guy who will run through a wall for me....

He gets to his mom and can't even get the words out. A whole nation wide-eyed at the moment.

You went to sleep hungry. You sacrificed for us. You the real MVP....

You the real MVP. People repeating it in awe at work the next day. And then in a week, less than a week, people repeating it with heretic glee, joking about it even. It becomes a punch line, something guys on Reddit say to one another. A virtual high five over a comic Vine. You the real MVP, person who actually pays for Netflix.

"I was like, man, that was a real emotional moment for me, and you making a joke about it! Like: Damn. Y'all don't really believe in shit. You don't have no morals or nothing. You don't care about nothing but just making fun."

How are you supposed to act in the world, when people feel entitled even to a moment like that?

"I was serious as###saying that, you know what I'm saying?"

The guy who's supposed to be the nicest guy in the league exhales.

"But after a while, it's all good."

What matters is that he said it.

He came offstage and his mom said, "I didn't know you felt that way about me!"

···

He rejects his nickname, the Slim Reaper, as ungodly. He's not here to be the guy of, "I guess, death," as he once said. Grew up in full fear of God, in fact. He was raised to think: "If I do something wrong, I'm going to hell." Then he met Carl Lentz, who ministers to Justin Bieber and sometimes leads prayers before Knicks games. Carl taught him God was about love. Before, "I felt like I had to follow the Ten Commandments. But we don't live by that no more. We live by the blood of Jesus. That's how I feel."

But then you watch him enter the arena one Monday night in Oakland to play the Golden State Warriors, something singularly lethal moving through the corridors of Oracle Arena—love isn't the first word that comes to mind. "When I'm on the court," he says, "I'm a total asshole. I'm a dick. I don't talk to the other team. If I fall on somebody, I throw them to the ground, I'm not helping them up. I just feel like it's a war mode. Like, they're trying to kill me, but I gotta kill them before they kill me."

How do people not see this? he wonders. If people only knew how he really felt about things when the game is involved. This is a person who can hardly watch basketball when he's not playing it. "I just don't like other teams or other players. I can't sit there. I feel like I'm supporting them by watching it. I hope you have a bad game. Because I'm such a hater! I thought it was a bad trait I had. I was like, Man, am I jealous? Why do I hate this guy? But I hope both of the teams lose! That's how I feel."

Anyway, the Thunder get blown out in Oakland. As they will again, a couple of nights later, in Sacramento, before rebounding at home against the Utah Jazz. Strange season for the Thunder and Kevin Durant. Not quite right so far. Going back to Team USA this summer, which Durant was on, until one day he wasn't. A refreshingly self-interested decision, from a guy whose brand is never being self-interested. "I just didn't feel like playing. Simple. I was good, mentally, physically. I just wanted to have the rest of my summer to myself." Fair enough. But then he got hurt anyway. Durant fractured his right foot, missed seventeen games, came back, lit it up, injured his ankle, missed six more games, came back again. The Thunder now destined to spend the season scrapping just for an eight seed in a conference they were favored to win.

And lurking over it all, the question of where he'll be after his contract runs out in 2016. Everyone jockeying for his attention, his devotion, his loyalty. Loyalty being a word Kevin Durant has had to become wise to. He heard the Sterling tapes like everyone else. "When that came out, we was just like, 'Oh, so that's how they feel about us?' " All this rhetoric about team, about loyalty. And then guys like Sterling basically acting in private like their players are property. "When players do stuff that benefits them, they're looked at as unloyal, selfish," Durant says. "But when a team decides to go the other way and cut a player, or not bring him back or not re-sign him, it's what's best for the team, and that's cool. But what we do is frowned upon, you know?"

Don't forget, Kevin Durant was not selfish: He signed a full extension in 2010, no opt-outs. He remembers that, even if no one else does, even as he anticipates the lurking storm of recrimination that awaits him if he doesn't re-up again. "I was loyal. If it comes down to that, I mean: I was. My deal's up in 2016. I'll have been here nine years. I could have easily wanted out. I could have easily not signed the extension after my rookie contract. I could have not played as hard every night. But people tend to forget." Same thing happened to LeBron James, when he switched teams and they burned his jersey. Kevin watched it like, Damn. "This is not just a game for us. This is life. Like, we live and die and breathe by basketball. We're away from our families to entertain other people."

Source: GQ.com

Date Posted: Wednesday, February 18th, 2015 , Total Page Views: 27610