At Team USA's practices, did I peer into the untarnished soul of the anti-Lebron?

Here's an interesting take by Slate's Tommy Craggs posing Kevin Durant as LeBron's antithesis.



It's easy to be drawn into this comparison.

I spoke to Durant for about 10 minutes a couple of days ago at practice and he came across as an easy-going kid. He seems to have no problems playing in a small market like OKC, and hadn't yet even walked down Istiklal Caddesi, Istanbul's main entertainment street - where he could see an image of himself on the front window of a Nike store. Hell, dude's mom has even come over to visit.



It doesn't matter to me whether he's an anti-LeBron or not. What matters to me is that he plays beautiful basketball, and he seems to be a good enough guy not to give the sport a bad name. Sure, this Anakin still has time to go Darth Vader on us, but that will be harder in OKC.



The reader reaction below is also interesting b/c in a perfect world journalists would have time to talk to a myriad sources for each piece. But that's not Slate's role. Its writers take snapshots of how American culture on the whole is reacting to a certain subject at a certain time - they don't spend time talking directly to sources. It's commentary, not reporting.



And talking to these Team USA athlete takes more time than a simple phone call.

My colleagues and I spent about 2.5-3 hours round trip sitting in a taxi going to their practices in a club team gym across the Euro side of Istanbul. From that, we had time for about 20-30 minutes of conversation. Part of that delay was due to the political rallies noted in the previous post.

Amplify’d from www.slate.com

Durant has sold himself well, or at least has given of himself so little that the very idea of his reticence could be fashioned into a cudgel against the Very Bad Thing of the day—ego run amok. More than anything, Durant offers the moralists a clean bank shot at LeBron and his cohort. He will remain useful in this role for a time, and then one day he'll go and do some Very Bad Thing and shatter all our precious illusions.

Here's an idea for Mr. Craggs: talk to the person you're writing about. Spend some time with him. Failing that, read stuff by people who have. Many of those sports journalists who are fawning over Kevin Durant and his humility are ones who have met and interviewed him. Some have even gone to his home in Oklahoma City and seen how he interacts with his neighbors and teammates. Invariably they come away from that experience talking about how great a guy he is. Read more at www.slate.com

 

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/b9tnkM