Since the 2018 NBA offseason, the Los Angeles Lakers have been looking for a second superstar to pair with arguably the best basketball player on the planet, LeBron James. They currently have a plethora of trade assets to engage in a blockbuster deal and are expected to have enough salary cap space to sign a max free agent in the summer of 2019. Unfortunately, in the past months, rumors are circulating that some NBA superstars, including Paul George, Jimmy Butler, and Kawhi Leonard, are not interested in teaming up with James in Los Angeles.
Kevin Durant believes one of the major reasons why superstars don’t want to join James is because they don’t want to be on the same toxic environment he’s currently in.
“He has so many fanboys in the media. Even the beat writers just fawn over him. I’m like, we’re playing basketball here, and it’s not even about basketball at certain points. So I get why anyone wouldn’t want to be in that environment because it’s toxic. Especially when the attention is bulls**t attention, fluff. It’s not LeBron’s fault at all; it’s just the fact you have so many groupies in the media that love to hang on every word. Just get out of the way and let us play basketball.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Kevin Durant: Media Environment Around LeBron is "Toxic" <a href="https://t.co/1eszyS2Lup">https://t.co/1eszyS2Lup</a> <a href="https://t.co/lFeZxoo9Sf">pic.twitter.com/lFeZxoo9Sf</a></p>— Lakers Outsiders (@LakersOutsiders) <a href="https://twitter.com/LakersOutsiders/status/1070478456549466112?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" >December 6, 2018</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Kevin Durant believes one of the major reasons why superstars don’t want to join James is because they don’t want to be on the same toxic environment he’s currently in.
“He has so many fanboys in the media. Even the beat writers just fawn over him. I’m like, we’re playing basketball here, and it’s not even about basketball at certain points. So I get why anyone wouldn’t want to be in that environment because it’s toxic. Especially when the attention is bulls**t attention, fluff. It’s not LeBron’s fault at all; it’s just the fact you have so many groupies in the media that love to hang on every word. Just get out of the way and let us play basketball.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Kevin Durant: Media Environment Around LeBron is "Toxic" <a href="https://t.co/1eszyS2Lup">https://t.co/1eszyS2Lup</a> <a href="https://t.co/lFeZxoo9Sf">pic.twitter.com/lFeZxoo9Sf</a></p>— Lakers Outsiders (@LakersOutsiders) <a href="https://twitter.com/LakersOutsiders/status/1070478456549466112?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" >December 6, 2018</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
