A clipped quote from Mat Ishbia's interview with CNBC's Alex Sherman made the rounds online, and Kevin Durant was not having it.
Kevin Durant broke a social media silence of more than two months to respond to Suns owner Mat Ishbia, after a quote from Ishbia's interview with CNBC's Alex Sherman circulated online framed as a shot at Durant's time in Phoenix.
The quote came from an NBA media aggregation account that stripped out the surrounding context. In the full interview, Ishbia was discussing the broader difficulty of building a championship roster in today's NBA and acknowledging missteps he made early on in setting the franchise's culture as team governor, not singling out Durant's tenure as a mistake.
Durant, who no longer plays for the Suns, saw the truncated quote land on his timeline and fired back, pushing back against the idea that his acquisition was being painted as an error. It marked a rare departure from his recent social media habits, which had mostly been limited to promoting his own media company.
The exchange underscores how quickly an out-of-context clip can spiral once it reaches a player known for engaging with anyone who brings up his name online.