A couple of days ago, Kevin Durant let the public see a side of him that he rarely displays.

Following a 108-103 loss to the Miami Heat in a primetime ABC tilt, the NBA scoring leader let loose on opposing forward, Chris Bosh:

“I was talking to my teammate and he decided he wanted to put his 2 cents into it. I’m a quiet guy, a laid-back guy, but I’m not going to let nobody talk trash to me. He’s on a good team now, so he thinks he can talk a little bit…I’m no punk. I wasn’t even talking to him, first off. He decided to butt in and I’m not going to just let that slide, especially in our house. There’s a lot of fake tough guys in this league and he’s one of them.”

Is Bosh a “fake tough guy?”  Perhaps.  Or maybe not.  Bosh has never really given us any evidence that he wants to be tough.  Most people assume that there’s a certain degree of desired toughness for interior players, but Bosh a merely a tall player.  He doesn’t really excel in post-up situations.  Bosh’s prized asset would be his agility and quickness, paired with a good mid-range touch.  He’s un-soft enough to have played in the last 5 All-Star games.  Whether he plays in L.A. this year remains to be seen, but Bosh held it down in T-Dot.  It seems weird to say that Bosh has been a 22-10 player for half a decade…but it’s true.

Now back to the incident itself.  The play being referenced in Durant’s sound bite occurred in the first quarter.  OKC was ahead, 17-13, when James Harden was soaring to the hoop on a fast break with only one defender in his path – Chris Bosh.  As textbook NBA rules would dictate, Bosh fouled Harden.  The force of the foul was perfect.  It was forceful enough to prevent the Thunder reserve from making the basket, but gentle enough that it could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be labeled as a ‘hard foul.’

Durant then encouraged Harden with the typical line delivered in pickup games (and the NBA, apparently) across America

“Next time, dunk on his @$$…” 

Following the same predictable script, Bosh chimed in to let Durant know that Harden was not going to dunk on his @$$ then or in the future.

Bosh has been a consistent 20-10 guy for the last five years.

And the chattering continued, until the refs shut it down with double technicals for the two lanky stars.

Smack talking is usually not big news in the NBA.  It’s something that the average fan knows exists.  And as a fan, you either like it or you don’t.  Some of the best in the game from a historical standpoint – Jordan, Bird, Payton, Garnett – have been masters at it.  But yesterday, we actually witnessed Kevin Durant talking.

He doesn’t seem to do it much.  But the timing of his engagement was surely heightened by the person who said something to him.

If you didn’t notice, Durant wasn’t one of the millions who seemed to seethe when it came to the creation of the Big Three in Miami.  But everyone did the to provide a stark contrast to the nature of his announcement (quietly through Twitter) as opposed to LeBron James’ (ESPN special).  Ironically, Bosh is tangled up in all of this – but he made his decision to play with Miami prior to James (from the media announcement perspective).

Bosh is generally, and rightfully, viewed as the least impactful of the Big Three, so Durant was probably eager to pounce on the less established member of this new coup which garnered all of the media hype and attention.  And while he was dealing with the loss after the contest, the insulting words probably flowed out of KD’s mouth like poetry… and sweet music to the ears of the reporters.

KD seems to have relented to what he was feeling at the moment, as he indicated yesterday on Twitter:

Up headed to practice…yesterday is over…if I’m over it yall definitely should be over it…movin on

But I guarantee you that the words that came out of Durant’s mouth would have been drastically different if the Thunder had been able to defend its home court.  The bottom line is that this was a showcase game for two of the league’s most talked about stars – Durant and LeBron James.

While the Heat mainly consist of established players and veterans attempting to come together for the goal of winning the championship, Oklahoma City is operating under a different set of circumstances.  The Thunder are represented by a group of fresh faces – Durant, Harden, Russell Westbrook, Jeff Green, Serge Ibaka – whose exciting play has taken the NBA by storm.  By all accounts, they are the new kids on the block, and Sunday’s game was the time to show everyone that they can slay the Goliaths of the league. 

Coming up a hair short may have pushed KD over the edge.

Given the Durant is already downplaying what he said, we may have keep the video archived.  I have a feeling that we’ll see Haley’s comet more often that we’ll see that type of outburst from KD.

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