Kevin Durant Wants No Part Of Being An All-Star Team Captain

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On Thursday, the latest round of fan voting for the NBA All-Star Game in Los Angeles next month revealed that LeBron James and Steph Curry were leading the pack in their respective conferences. They upended Giannis Antetokounmpo and Kevin Durant, who were the top vote-getters after the early returns came filtering in just a week prior.

If the trend continues, that means LeBron and Steph will be crowned team captains under the revised format and therefore be responsible for drafting their squads from among the pool of players selected for the league’s annual midseason event.

That was excellent news for Durant, who apparently wants no part of having to draft a team from among a group of his peers and all the political and interpersonal drama that would ostensibly accompany it.

Via The Athletic:

“I don’t want to do it,” Durant told The Athletic. “I’d rather somebody else do it. It’s cool to be an All-Star, but all the extra stuff … I just want to go play in the game. [The new format]’s cool, a different way, a creative way that’s good for the fans. But me, I’ll let somebody else pick the teams.”

There are plenty of reasons why a player might want to avoid that situation, particularly Durant, given that he could very well be put in a position where he’d have to select or shun his arch-nemesis Russell Westbrook. However, Adam Silver has done the players an enormous favor – and, conversely, a huge disservice to the fans – by opting against televising the event.

It’s both a missed marketing opportunity for the league as a whole and will likely only add to the growing perception that NBA players today are too sensitive and/or too buddy-buddy with one another. In any case, Durant has dodged a bullet so far, but who knows whether that’ll be the case once the final votes are tallied.

(The Athletic)

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