I have covered sports for twenty years. I have done radio, I have done television, I have sat in press boxes from Cleveland to Los Angeles. And I can tell you with confidence that I have never seen anything quite like the KD Files - a fully searchable database cataloguing Kevin Durant's history of operating fake social media accounts to defend himself, attack teammates, and wage shadow wars with his critics.
Thirty-three pieces of evidence have now been released at kdfiles.com, and every one of them adds another brushstroke to one of the most psychologically complex portraits professional sports has ever produced. Here is a man who by any objective measure is one of the three greatest scorers in NBA history. A man with two Finals MVPs, an Olympic gold medalist, a generational talent who has averaged over 27 points per game for his entire career. And yet, apparently, he spent significant mental real estate constructing shadow identities to argue with people on the internet about his legacy.
Folks, I cannot make this stuff up.
But here is the part of this story that flips the entire accepted narrative on its head - and this is what makes it worth digging into beyond the entertainment value. According to the files, Kevin Durant went after Steph Curry and Kyrie Irving far more viciously than he ever went after Russell Westbrook.
Let that marinate for a second.
For years, the dominant story in the NBA was that Durant left Oklahoma City to escape Westbrook's gravitational pull - that Russ was the difficult teammate, the ball-dominant force that made winning impossible. The original burner incident, back when this all first came to light, actually had Durant defending Westbrook, with burner accounts saying Westbrook was his "only good teammate" in OKC and that the other players were the problem.
Now look at File-015, which shows his internal ranking of competitors. He referred to as and as writing:
