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Kevin Durant has had quite an illustrious career, winning two NBA championships, two Finals MVPs and one MVP award. The prolific small forward is widely revered as the best player in the league at the moment. Durant is expected to deliver a maiden championship for his current franchise, the Brooklyn Nets, this season.
During his career, he has played with some great talent. But some of them have made news for their off-court and on-court controversial activities over the years.
Kevin Durant himself is no stranger to light controversy, as he is often found bantering with fans on social media, especially Twitter. But he has had several teammates who absolutely trump him in that department. Here is a look at five of them:
#5 Nick Young (Golden State Warriors)
Nick Young and Kevin Durant played together for the Golden State Warriors during the 2017-18 season, which ended in Dubnation winning the championship. Durant and Young shared great camaraderie then, but Young ended up staying with the Warriors for just one season.
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Young has been involved in various controversies, most recently for making sexist comments through his Instagram account. He later said that his account had been hacked. Moreover, he was also involved in a tussle with his former teammate D'Angelo Russell over a cheating controversy regarding his then-fiance, Iggy Azalea.
#4 Kendrick Perkins (OKC Thunder)
Kendrick Perkins and Kevin Durant played together for one of the biggest 'What If' teams of all time, the Westbrook-Durant-Harden era OKC Thunder. The team got close to winning the championship in 2012, but the Miami Heat won the title that year.
Perkins, an analyst for ESPN, is known to make controversial comments quite often. He tends to dish out hot takes on a weekly basis. He got embroiled in a tiff with 'Slim Reaper' Kevin Durant, who called out Perkins for making false statements on Twitter.
#3 Russell Westbrook (OKC Thunder)
Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook were among the best guard-forward tandems in the league when they played for the OKC Thunder. Durant was the first to leave when he joined the Golden State Warriors in 2017, while Westbrook exited in 2019 to join the Houston Rockets.
Westbrook has been involved in fights with fans multiple times in his career, especially with the Utah Jazz's. He was fined for threatening a Jazz fan and got into an altercation with another later that season during the playoffs. He also has a longstanding rivalry with Rajon Rondo, which was on full display in the 2020 NBA playoffs.
#2 Draymond Green (Golden State Warriors)
Apart from being teammates with the Golden State Warriors during the team's most successful era, Draymond Green and Kevin Durant are also close friends. Green played a key role in recruiting Durant to the Golden State Warriors, which led to the duo winning two championships together.
Draymond Green has invited controversies all his career, especially on the court. He gets ejected from games quite often, and his one game-ban in the 2016 NBA finals helped the Cleveland Cavaliers come back from 3-1 to win the championship.
Apart from that, he also caught a lot of flak for accidentally uploading an NSFW picture on social media in 2016.
#1 Kyrie Irving (Brooklyn Nets)
Like Green, Kevin Durant shares a close friendship with Kyrie Irving, his Brooklyn Nets teammate.
Kevin Durant and Irving joined the franchise together in the summer of 2019, with the goal of winning the championship. However, they have not been able to do so yet. Going by Irving's stance against COVID-19 vaccination, it looks like they may not be able to do it together this season as well.
Kyrie Irving has been called out multiple times in his career for various reasons - stomping on the Celtics logo, flat earth theory and his unexplained absence during the 2020-21 season. The most recent one is his vaccination controversy, and there is a good possibility of him not playing an NBA game this season.
