Kevin Durant on trash-talk with Gary Payton: ’90s players tend to talk down on the mentality of our era’s players’

“G’s a great sport about it — one of my favorite players, somebody I look up to, got major respect for. I think we started in the summer with Team USA. We were all in the same room with Team USA, and the first thing I said to him was that he couldn’t guard me. ‘You’re too small. Them dudes that played back in the day wasn’t close to me.’ I was just talking crazy to him, so I guess we picked it up from there.” Durant, who scored 19 points in 29 minutes during the win, traded trash talk with Payton for most of the third quarter. Durant finished the quarter with a trio of 3-pointers to stretch the Suns’ lead to 19. At the end of the quarter, he made a beeline toward the corner where Payton was sitting, but Durant was adamant he didn’t need a scoring outburst for fodder in their conversation. -via ESPN / February 1, 2025

Derek Fisher on his famous 0.4 shot vs. Spurs: ‘For a long time it reminded me of a down year, if that makes sense because we lost in the Finals to the Pistons, so I’m like ‘I don’t want to remember 2004’, but you can’t escape the moment. Yeah the play wasn’t design for me, and if you’re on a team with Kobe and Shaq, the play is not for you. I’m not mad about that at all either. So the play wasn’t designed for me, it was really the gravitational pull that the two of those guys have by pulling players towards them, like I just kind of stood there and waited for the right moment to go to the open space and I always give Gary Payton a ton of credit because he was taking the ball out and most guys will force it to the superstars in that situation, because they don’t want to be the one that have to explain ‘why you tried to throw it to this dude as opposed to try to throw it to Kobe or Shaq?!’ So I always give GP major love for making like what was the right basketball decision, it ended up working out but a lot of dudes would have forced that ball to to Kobe or Shaq.’ -via YouTube / January 7, 2025

Jorge Sierra: Damian Lillard passed Gary Payton in scoring last night and is No. 38 all-time now. Suns sixth man Bradley Beal moved ahead of Buck Williams for No. 107 in NBA history. Zach LaVine (29) has now scored more points than Derrick Rose and Goran Dragic. -via Bluesky / January 7, 2025

Duane Rankin: Kevin Durant on Devin Booker #NBAAllStar2025 snub: “You know how politics get. We’re playing in a narrative based game. Sometimes it don’t really matter what you do on the court. You’ve got to kind of sell your play, sell your personality a little bit and Book not even close to pic.x.com/DuFal1zS5h -via Twitter @DuaneRankin / February 1, 2025

HIS INSTAGRAM HANDLE, @easymoneysniper, sums up the essence of Kevin Durant’s scoring ability. His teammates, even the fellow future Hall of Famers, have always been in awe of how uniquely smooth, simple and pure Durant makes getting buckets look. That has been the case from the time he broke into the league as a rail-thin teenager to now, when Durant continues to rank among the league’s most prolific, efficient scorers in the 18th season of his career. “He’s that guy that you see almost like a monument in a science museum of just like, what does a great scorer look like?” former Brooklyn Nets and Team USA teammate Kyrie Irving told ESPN. “Seven feet, able to handle the ball, able to shoot over anybody, but also a fierce competitor.” -via ESPN / January 31, 2025