Texas Basketball: KD gets in social media brouhaha with Scottie Pippen
A pretty crazy exchange went down this week between the former Texas basketball superstar forward and elite five-star recruit Kevin Durant and the Chicago Bulls Hall-of-Fame forward and former Central Arkansas Bear Scottie Pippen. It all started out with some comments that Pippen made about what Durant needs to learn and how he would still choose the Los Angeles Lakers superstar forward LeBron James over him in crunch time.
Pippen called out KD in this interview that he did with GQ earlier in the week, but it wasn’t anything that looked to be super-malicious. It just didn’t feel like Pippen needed to dig as deep into KD as he did.
KD does deserve a certain level of respect in the NBA at this point of his career. A four-time scoring champ, one-time NBA MVP, two-time Finals MVP, and two-time NBA Champion, has a solidified resume and is a legit future Hall-of-Famer, without a doubt.
The point of the interview where Pippen really dug deep into KD was with this statement in the GQ interview.
The blow up between former Texas basketball star Kevin Durant and Scottie Pippen turns to social media
"And this is no knock to KD, but they asked me, “Has he surpassed LeBron James?” And my answer was: LeBron James knows team basketball better than KD."
The response from KD was swift to Pippen on his Twitter timeline this week. KD dug even deeper than Scottie, calling him out for taking himself out of the game in the 1994 playoffs with the Bulls against the New York Knicks. In that series between the Bulls and Knicks, Pippen took himself out of the game when head coach Phil Jackson drew up a play late in the game for Toni Kukoc instead of him.
Didn’t the great Scottie pippen refuse to go in the game for the last second shot because he was in his feelings his coach drew up the play for a better shooter??
— Kevin Durant (@KDTrey5) June 24, 2021
The Twitter response from KD continued on, stating that no one really wanted to play for the Bulls in the 1990s because of Pippen. He tabbed the legendary head coach Jackson as the person that players followed to the Bulls back in the day.
There’s not much else that came about in this exchange between KD and Pippen since these posts on social media responding to the initial GQ interview on June 24. But it could continue to develop depending on if Pippen gives his own take on the matter from the KD response heading into the weekend.
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KD was just knocked out in a thrilling seven-game series in the second round of the playoffs with the Brooklyn Nets by the Milwaukee Bucks and superstar forward Giannis Antetokounmpo. The former Longhorn star has made various headlines in the past few years for his comments and responses away from the game, and this is no exception.