Kevin Durant’s High School Teammate Reveals How His Father Rejected the Rockets Star’s Autograph Years Before His NBA Success

Prateek Singh | 07/07/2025
Kevin Durant attends the game between the Golden State Valkyries and the LA Sparks at Crypto.com Arena.

Some of the best NBA stories never happen under bright lights or in packed arenas. They happen quietly, years before the fame kicks in. One such tale resurfaced online recently, this time involving a young Kevin Durant, before he ever became a league MVP, NBA Champion, or one of the most dominant scorers in history.

The story comes from Ant Wright, Durant’s former high school teammate. It started with a simple post on social media asking users to share a piece of personal lore. Wright responded with a memory that instantly stood out, a memory involving an old cupboard.

As Wright shared, his dad was very particular about the things he valued. In this case, it was a plain household cupboard. One day during high school, two of Wright’s teammates, Rajon Rondo and Josh Smith, visited the house. Before they left, Wright’s dad asked them to sign the cupboard. And they did.

Next year, the cupboard could’ve attained an even bigger iconic status, but Wright’s dad wanted to protect the two signatures. He wrote, “The next year a couple more teammates came over, and he proudly showed off the cupboard with the signatures.. they asked to sign it but he didn’t want them to mess it up.. so Ty Lawson and Kevin Durant never signed my dads cupboard.”

At the time, Durant and Lawson were just promising high school players, talented but still unknown outside the local scene. There was no way to know Durant would one day be one of the greatest scorers the league has ever seen.

Now, years later, that unsigned cupboard has become a fun snapshot of history. A reminder of how unpredictable greatness can be. But the story didn’t end there. After the post reached a lot of people, Wright posted a picture of the cupboard with the caption, “Called my mom to take a picture of it for yall.”

In the picture, you can see Josh Smith and Rajon Rondo’s signatures with their respective jersey numbers #42 and #4.

Post Edited By: Afnan Chougle
Kevin Durant

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Prateek Singh

Prateek is a Senior NBA Writer for The SportsRush. He has over 900 published articles under his name. Prateek merged his passion for writing and his love for the sport of basketball to make a career out of it. Other than basketball, he is also an ardent follower of the UFC and soccer. Apart from the world of sports, he has followed hip-hop religiously and often writes about the origins, evolution, and the biggest stars of the music genre.

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