Monroe Dispatch - No Struggle, No Progress

This past summer NBA superstar Kevin Durant received lots of backlash after revealing he was behind a fake social media account, that shared his true feelings about his former team and coaches.

Durant began his career as a professional basketball player in 2007 at age 19 with the Seattle Supersonics, and was named NBA Rookie

Player of the Year. The next year the team was renamed and moved, officially becoming the Oklahoma City Thunder. Despite his athletic

star power, Durant and his teammates could not seem to win an NBA championship title, which was a childhood goal of his. In 2016, Durant signed with the Golden State Warriors. The public received the move negatively, but after much public scrutiny, Durant won a national championship title with his new team in the spring of 2017. Durant was the top scorer for the Warriors in the 2017 finals series and received the Bill Russell NBA Finals Most Valuable Player Award. Despite public backlash for his team transition, Durant has always been a good guy. The NBA star has the reputation of being a true nice guy and one of the most likeable players in

the league.

In April 2017 he created a Youtube channel where he announced he would deactivate his other popular personal social media pages. In the summer of 2017, months later, Durant made a social media faux pas by posting in third person as if someone else were responding to the question through his personal Twitter account. The truth however was that Durant, had two Twitter accounts and simply forgot to log out of his personal Twitter account. He used his other Twitter account as a means to speak more candidly about himself, pretending to be someone else to say his true feelings, and communicate with fans. In his tweet he answered a fan who was curious about the true reason he wanted to leave his Oklahoma City team behind. He responded by saying he didn’t like playing under his former coach, and that after years of trying he didn’t think he could win a championship with just one other star player.

Instead of claiming he was hacked or the tweet was bogus the 28 year old star athlete owned up to his mistake. The mistake however caused him even more grief with fans.

This mistake reminds me of a lot things. We are all human. No matter where we are in life, we will all make mistakes. It doesn’t matter

how much money you make or even if “you should know better”, mistakes in life are inevitable.

Kevin could have made all the excuses in the world or even pin the blame of his mistake on someone else to take the heat off himself

but he did not. Instead he confessed to his mistake and apologized which is often very rare for those with money, power, and

influence.

This mistake also makes me curious to know, why do we put so much pressure on ourselves to live a certain way? Why do we care about

the opinions of others about us? Why do we sometimes go to extreme lengths to get people to change their perception of us?

My mind leads me to believe that there is never enough to please some people. We all should come to an awakening and awareness

of ourselves in which we are confident in our voice, decisions, and directions. We should be considerate of others, but not so much so that

we alter or cheat ourselves of who we really are.