We all knew that Kevin Durant loves basketball, and Blake Griffin thought he did too. But Blake didn’t realize how much till he joined the Nets.
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Getting to the NBA and being counted among some of the world’s top 450 basketball players requires an undying passion for the game. There are rare exceptions where the likes of Andrew Bynum can get by because they hit the genetic lottery.
But if you were any shorter than 6’9″, then you had to grind your way into becoming a professional. And in the modern day, with AAU basketball and other competitive settings out there, it truly is a long process.
Being in love with the process and staying in that zone is a prerequisite for basketball, or indeed, sporting greatness. And it’s a quality that Kevin Durant has always had in spades.
You can just hear the passion for the game when KD takes to talking about the game. It’s apparent in his various podcast interviews over the years. But the true degree of his obsession with his craft and the game, in general, remains unknown to the public.
Blake Griffin believes Kevin Durant lives basketball like few others in the world
The Nets were successful in recruiting Blake Griffin as a buyout candidate around the 2021 All-Star Break. They held off stiff competition from a whole host of other contenders, as Griffin narrated in an interview with Graham Bensinger.
One of the things that has stuck with Blake is the degree to which the Slim Reaper lives basketball. In his own words:
“I love basketball. (For) Kevin Durant, (basketball) it’s his favorite thing to do, and so is mine. But he will play all day if you let him, he’ll play all day.”
“And he watches basketball, he loves to talk basketball. He watches high school kids play, you know what I mean? He gives back to the game, we all do.”
“But you can tell he’s at his pure (state of) happiness when it’s hoops. And it’s just refreshing, because there’s no fluff, there’s no PR gimmicks, there’s no anything else with him. That’s just who he is.”
