VANCOUVER — An hour before tipoff, Kevin Durant sat at his locker, his feet bare, knees pulled up to his chest. His eyes were closed and, with headphones on, he quietly bopped his head to music.
A few feet away, Durant’s new teammate, Stephen Curry, addressed a large crowd of reporters. Durant had already met with the media, and now he was alone, quietly basking in the calm before the storm — preparing himself for his debut in a Golden State Warriors jersey.
“I’m sure we’re going to be a hot ticket coming into town,” Durant had said before retreating to his seat in the locker room. “And everybody’s going to want to see us play. I look at it that way.”
Durant was right. While the Toronto Raptors, who hosted the Warriors in an exhibition matchup at Rogers Arena, have always managed to draw huge crowds in Vancouver for what’s become their annual stop in town during the NBA pre-season, the Warriors drew their own fans, too, and Durant was the centre of attention on the night. His move to Golden State — a team that had posted a historically unmatched 73-9 regular-season record last season — was always guaranteed to cause a frenzy. The team was already an offensive force, and his arrival should make an already ridiculously talented group even better.
In other words, there was always going to be some backlash.
On Saturday at Rogers Arena, that backlash came in the form of boos, which Durant received whenever he touched the ball. Or most of the time, at least. When the 28-year-old scored on a breakaway dunk in the first quarter, he received a resounding round of cheers from the crowd. It was as though even those fans, acknowledging Durant’s star power, couldn’t help but applaud the moment.
In all, it wasn’t an exceptional night for either Durant or his team. The small forward had nine points in his 19 minutes of play and looked a little rusty; the Warriors lost to the Raptors, 97–93.
But it’s the pre-season, so the rust was expected. Warriors coach Steve Kerr had indicated ahead of the game that his starters would be limited to 20 minutes of playing time, and Kerr followed his game plan.
The loss marked the start of Golden State’s pre-season. During training camp, questions had loomed about how this so-called ‘super team’ would be received on the road, and Draymond Green had recently invited fans to boo the team, telling The Mercury News, “They’re gonna boo us anyway everywhere we go, so that’s fine.”
“The most fun I have in this game is going on another team’s floor and quieting their crowd anyway,” he’d added. “So boo. Then eventually you’ll shut up. And I’ll laugh. We’ll laugh. And we’ll keep it moving.”
The fans in Vancouver didn’t shut up, but neither was their booing all that vicious. These boos, directed at Durant, were restrained and almost business-like.
Curry, when asked about the jeers directed at his teammate, said he thought Durant handled it well.
“He probably just had some anxiousness and adrenalin just from getting out there for the first time,” he said. “So it was good to see him be comfortable and see what our team’s gonna look like.”
It helps, maybe, that the team is no stranger to this kind of reception. As coach Kerr said, “We’re kind of used to being a travelling road show, circus, whatever you want to call it. It’s not anything that bothers us. We just go out and play and have fun.”
So what did Durant make of it all? Following the game, a new kind of frenzy ensued in the team’s locker room, where a sizeable crowd of reporters, most of them from out of town, wrestled for a chance to hear Durant and his teammates hold forth on the meaning of a meaningless game.
When Durant emerged for his moment in front of the microphones, he was smiling.
“I heard more cheers than boos, to be honest,” Durant said when asked about the crowd’s reaction. Of course, he wasn’t going out of his way to listen for boos, he said.
Durant called the game “a good first step,” but acknowledged that his team missed a lot of shots.
When asked about his shot in particular (Was he frustrated? Did he feel rusty?) Durant responded that, no, he didn’t feel the rust.
“My shot looked good,” he said. “I don’t know, tight rims, you gotta swish them in. I think everybody, both teams, shots were going in and out the basket.”
Durant added, again smiling, “I feel like I should make every shot, so of course I’m frustrated.”
He acknowledged that, despite this being only an exhibition game, the feeling was a little different, if only because of the significance of putting on a different team’s jersey. The six-foot-nine, 240-pounder drafted by the Seattle SuperSonics in 2007 had until this year spent his entire career with the same franchise, which moved to Oklahoma City after his first season in Seattle.
But just as he was unfazed by the boos, Durant seemed, in all, wholly unfazed by his new circumstances — unbothered by the attention he’s drawn, negative or positive, which is unlikely to diminish any time soon.
“As far as the game goes, once the ball was tipped, it was just another game for me,” he said.
