Kevin Durant’s comment on 13-year-old’s flashy move: mean or purist chalk talk?

When Kevin Durant tweeted out his comment on a 13-year-old’s flashy moves three days ago, it looked a bit, shall we say, grinchy.

According to USA Today, the eighth grader, his parents and teammates were all a bit confused and upset. Josh Peter wrote Wednesday...

Jayden Moore said he was jumping up and down with other members of his basketball team at Hopkins High School in Minnetonka, Minnesota, on Monday, but it had nothing to do with an alley-oop, a buzzer beater or a thrilling comeback.

During a break at practice, they learned Kevin Durant had retweeted a video of Moore attempting a flashy move on the basketball court. Kevin freaking Durant!

Only upon closer inspection, they discovered Durant, the 11-time NBA All-Star, tweeted about the move, “This (expletive) stinks.”

“Like, what made him take time out of his day to say something negative instead of encouraging me or telling what really needs to be done and then texting me privately or something like that,” Moore said.

Making matters worse for the kid was that Isaiah Thomas of the Lakers and Austin Daye who won a ring with the 2014 Spurs chimed in, agreeing with Durant. That perturbed young Moore’s coach, Ken Novak.

“There’s almost an immaturity with them to take the time to even go on Twitter and look at that (video) and comment,” Novak told USA Today. “In fairness to them, I’m sure they’re trying to create what they see as better basketball, people sharing. And maybe they’re making a comment trying to say that. But they just got to realize who they’re saying it to.”

KD’s words of course carry a lot of weight — so does his trolling — and his tweet got nearly 5 million page views, 19,000 retweets and 178,000 likes. As criticism mounted, Durant did not back down...

Moore, noting the video was a couple of years old, quickly recovered and sensing an opportunity, tweeted this...

No response from KD yet — he is in quarantine, after all. But in a crazy season like this, you never know. (The New York Post suggested that Durant’s comments were “random” without realizing that Overtime, the highlight video site, isn’t that “random” for the Nets superstar. He owns a minority stake in Overtime.)

• An eighth grader is buried in criticism after Kevin Durant trashed him. ‘Why’s KD being so mean?’ - Josh Peter - USA Today
• Eighth-grader ‘hurt’ after Kevin Durant randomly attacks him on Twitter - Ryan Glasspiegel - New York Post