Kevin Durant described exactly how he felt as Serge Ibaka stole the ball from his as he tore his Achilles in the 2019 NBA Finals.
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KD and Serge Ibaka were teammates for 7 years at Oklahoma City. The duo occupied the two forward spots for OKC during their fabled run to the 2012 NBA Finals.
While they never returned to that stage together again, they did face off in the NBA Finals later on. Ibaka was traded by the Thunder to Orlando, who turned around and sent him to Toronto.
Ibaka was a crucial cog in the Raptors’ run to the 2019 NBA championship. He was also the Raptors player closest to the 4-time NBA scoring champ when he went down with injury.
Kevin Durant describes how his ACL tear felt on Serge Ibaka’s ‘How Hungry are you?’
Durant was a guest for Serge Ibaka on one of his lockdown editions of ‘How Hungry are You?’ The Congolese-Spanish center has had numerous teammates and opponents on this cooking show as guests. In this episode, Durant was slated to eat a cooked snake with Serge.
In KD’s words, the injury was quite an unnerving, shocking experience for him. He really did feel like he was in the movies given the emotional roller-coaster he rode:
“I feel like my whole basketball life flashed before my eyes. I thought about everything I did, like the first time I played until then, you know what I’m saying? That was the first time that something like that had ever happened to me on the court.”
“And I just, I guess it relaxed me a bit as I thought about it because I’m like ‘Man, I’ve been through everything, and this is something else that I gotta get over. So let me get my a** up and walk to the locker room and figure out what’s next.'”
“First of all, when you switched out on me. I was like ‘Why would y’all switch Serge out on me? Even though I’m a little hobbled right now, this is a bucket!'”
“And it’s crazy how fast your mind switches, because in the matter of the next second, I was on the ground thinking about my whole basketball career
