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It's mainly because he's not LeBron, so all the LeBron haters will make every excuse possible for why the made loser they've pinned their hopes on is really just an overglorified Kevin Martin....
LeBron spent 7 years in Cleveland on a largely talent barren roster, and after 7 years had 1 finals appearance (and smothering loss) to show for it. He was called a choker. He shrunk in big moments. He was mentally weak. He would never be able to win one, especially as a #1 option (right hater?). He never played for a good coach or had a roster resembling a contender but was one of the most hated on athletes I could remember, especially since I'm in LA and it was all Kobe fans laughing at him.
Well now Kevin Durant is 7 years into his NBA career, with nothing to show for it outside of 1 finals appearance (and smothering loss). Outside a handful of this forum, he's rarely called a choker. He doesn't get criticized for coming up small in big moments. Imagine if LeBron had that slip/turnover in an OT of a playoff game... the reception that would get. Unlike LeBron, KD has actually played with elite NBA talent. Harden and Westbrook are both undoubtedly top 15 players (if not top 10). OKC has arguably the best HCA in the league. Brooks is a bad coach, but he's no worse than Potato Head...
People on this board know i'm not a LeBron fanboy at all, but I'm just curious as to why KD seems to avoid so much of the mainstream criticism that LeBron got after 7 years, despite having more or less the same resume, but with superior help. It it because expectations for him were lower? LeBron was touted as the next legend since before he was drafted, had the King James le (king without a ring, back then), wore 23, etc. But that can't be the whole reason, can it?
It's mainly because he's not LeBron, so all the LeBron haters will make every excuse possible for why the made loser they've pinned their hopes on is really just an overglorified Kevin Martin....
KD is better than that, this isn't really a thread made to rag on KD per se, just about the reactions towards them seen in the mainstream nba fans/media
I think it's because Lebron was always a genetic monster. He was largely expected to come in and dominate after a couple of seasons. You look at Durant, and while talented, he's a skinny ass tall dude.
Kevin's game is also largely dependent on getting freebies (something his coach admitted multiple times during the last series), and he just doesn't have the tools to be the kind of defender Lebron is.
Also Lebron jumped into the spotlight with a huge endorsement deal from Nike before he entered the league, and the expectations were sky high.
KD wasn't even expected to be the top pick in his class (Oden). He eventually turned into a solid player.
Kd would have already rang in the Weak East and teamed up with superfriends
/thread
KD's been crafting his good guy image since he got in the league tbh. Covering up his tats, hugging his fat mom, saying all the right things about his city/teammamtes/coach, etc.
His game is also much harder for the average fan to criticize as he's arguably the best scorer since Jordan. People weren't used to a great player making the right basketball play like LeBron does since most of the fans in the 2000s grew up watching Kirby.
The NBA is selective on labeling players chokers. Dirk was labeled a choked 24/7 after 2006. He had to ring in 2011 to shut his haters up. Chris Paul has never been to a conference final yet he's the best point guard in the NBA. Ray Allen couldn't get to the Finals as the main man and he was never called a choker. Grant hill too. Lots of players had failures in the playoffs yet the choker label was never put on them.
Tough to call Grant Hill a "choker" when his career was destroyed by injuries before it ever really got started, tbh....
i'm an LA guy, so a lot of the anti-lebron stuff i heard imo was defensive reactions from kobe fans when people started discussing lebron being the best player in the league. all the jokes were "kobe called lebron, but there was no ring" and stuff like that. KD was always good, but his rise to true supers om has coincided with Kobe's decline since 2010... i feel like a lot of the LeBron bashing earlier was a defense mechanism to protect Kobe's image at the time. now that everybody knows kobe has declined/retired, they don't feel threatened enough to bash on the next rising star. at least thats the perception I have from the Los Angeles point of view.
Kirby stans have all adopted Durbeta as their subs ute favorite player now that Kirby is done, tbh....
Durant was expected to be a franchise player from the very beginning. Still, people hated on LeBron for the tattoos, the dancing on the sidelines, and for being the greatest high school prospect since Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. People hated him for being on ESPN in prime time while in high school even though that first game they broadcast proved he was way better than the (enormous) hype at the time. People have such ridiculous double standards with James too. Everyone es about ballhogs like Westbrook, Iverson, and Bryant, but the internet practically exploded when he set up wide-open shots for the game for Donyell Marshall two games in a row in Detroit. They hate him for going to Miami to win a le as if O'Neal, Duncan, Bryant, Jordan, Bird, Magic, etc never had stacked teams around them.
Greg Oden was picked ahead of KD. KD wasn't the 2nd coming of the Christ child. He was a UT player who had a sweet shooting stroke and the length to get if off over taller defenders. Lebron was a manchild dominating HS games, being visited by superstars and coddled by everyone. He was the 1st overall without a blink of an eye. KD has outperformed his expectations. Lebron is just starting to catch up to his, and it required 3 more superstars to do so.
Is it fair? Probably not, but then no one calls KD the best player on the planet, just one of the best shooters. He's a great player, no doubt, but he's competing against his own PG for touches. Lebron didn't have to worry about that, but he and KD have completely different roles.
In my experience though. people were hating LeBron when he was still on Cleveland. But yeah, KD was fully expected to be a franchise guy. I remember they were calling him a fusion of T-Mac and KG
KD is a franchise guy. If the draft happened again today KD would be picked 100 times out of 100 over anyone who's recently drafted anyone other than Lebron since they both entered the league. KD would be chosen over Anthony Davis, over Lillard, over Kyrie, over John Wall, over Beal, over Bennett (maybe), over anyone at all other than James. He wasn't expected to be that good, else he would have been the 1st overall pick.In my experience though. people were hating LeBron when he was still on Cleveland. But yeah, KD was fully expected to be a franchise guy. I remember they were calling him a fusion of T-Mac and KG
Probably because LeBron's entry to the Association was much more hyped up and anticipated as compared to Durant's. LeBron was being touted as the next face of the league and the next Jordan. I'm not saying that he has had a failed career (lol duh), but much more was expected from flamboyant and showy LeBron as compared to Durant, who was and is still viewed as a humble kid
That's funny, because all the hype this year about Durbeta's MVP was that he was surpassing LeBron or was at least on LeBron's level now.... then when he chokes, he suddenly doesn't deserve criticism because he's not as good as LeBron? That's a cop-out, tbh.... Choke Paul, Melo, and Dwight aren't as good as LeBron either and they all take more criticism for losing than Durbeta does....
Why should pre-career hype have any bearing on who gets criticism now? Media not turning people against Durbeta from the start like they did with LeBron doesn't change the fact that Durbeta was hyped up to be "coming for LeBron's throne" NOW and not only failed but did so as the third-best player on his team in the playoffs....
Not really. No one from the mainstream media has called out Jannero Paulgo for his choking ways.
Good point, he should be called out for letting Westbrook take over in Game 6. But this league is so much a league of reputation, whether it's good or bad reputation. KD's reputation as an underdog playing for a small market team is a sob story that's hard to pass up.
I'm not just talking about Media, though.... NBA fans criticize Choke (despite his lack of criticism from Media), but both fans and Media give Durbeta a huge pass....
I disagree; I think a lot of people expected Durant to be this good. I did after watching his year at Texas. It's just people expected Oden to be a fusion of Shaq and David Robinson.
I did, but obviously the teams who drafted didn't. I expected Oden to be injured as well. While I expected Durant to be good, I did not expect him to win an MVP playing along side RW. It took an injury to RW to make that happen.
kd didnt come into the league saying his the chosen one or king...
ppl didnt give him high expectations to challenge to be on goat lists
he will never be top10 player ever on the list, he be lucky to push into the top25
Durant's supporting casts have been much, much better than Lebron's Heat supporting casts, tbh..anybody that looks at the actual facts can see that..
The reason he won't get criticized is because it doesn't fit the media narrative, and most NBA fans are blind sheep that bite on the media narratives..
The Thunder storyline is that Westbrook is the cancer that takes bad shots and doesn't pass Durant the ball..so we'll ignore Westbrook outplaying Durant throughout the playoffs, and only focus on Westbrook's shot selection at certain points of the game, and over-analyze Durant's reactions to Westbrook's shots..
So, at the end of game 6, rather than discussing Durant not coming up big and even slipping in clutch time, everybody talked about Durant being relegated to a spot-up shooter, along with discussing Westbrook's shot selection(ignoring that he was the only aggressive Thunder player in OT)..
However, unlike Lebron, Durant's coach actually receives blame from the national media, and rightfully so..most people recognize Brooks as a terrible coach and use him as a scapegoat, which is find..
In contrast, look back at SpursTalk or any forum back in 2010, along with any media outlet at the time of Lebron's Free Agency..Mike Brown was being defended by most people and he was even being heralded as a good coach, look it up..it wasn't until he went to the Lakers that people realized how ty of a coach he is..
Furthermore, look at how Ibaka was perceived by the media prior to the Spurs series..he rarely got any recognition for being OKC's version of Bosh until everybody saw how terrible they looked without him in the first 2 games of the Spurs series..then all of a sudden, the media wouldn't shut up about him, once Durant was about to fail again, they had to create an excuse
Durbeta has been engineered by the media to be this humble superstar and the hero to Lebron's villain. He is coddled by the league/media and is given a pass while Westbrook takes the blame for the losses despite playing like the MVP of the Thunder in the playoffs.
Durant is a great player but he is nowhere close to being on LeBron's level yet. If you can't carry a gallon of milk to your car without your little niglet arms snapping in half, you ain't ever gonna be among the true greatest players ever imo
Could you imagine this league if Durant and James swapped levels of ref protection?
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