Mom: Kevin Durant return to play ‘not unexpected or shocking to me’

In an interview with the New York Post, Wanda Durant talked about what it was like to watch her son go down with a ruptured Achilles tendon ... and how he has dealt with adversity since then.

“It was one of the hardest things for me to watch because I couldn’t help. I wasn’t there physically. I was not in the arena. When I saw it, it just broke my heart. It was tough and it was difficult, and as a mom I wanted to be next to my baby,” Wanda said. “I just wanted to be there to support him, and it was really difficult.”

After the initial shock, Wanda went into mom-mode ... and Kevin accepted all the love.

“And after he allowed me to pamper him and do all the stuff that mothers love to do, he’s like, ‘OK mom, I’m OK now. I have this and I’m gonna be OK.’ ”

Now, two years after the injury, the surgery, the recovery, the rehab and all the COVID-related inconveniences, KD’s mom says she is not surprised by what she and we are seeing the court. She’s seen it all before, going back to Prince Georges County in Maryland.

“It’s mind blowing, but for me, that’s just who my son is,” Wanda told Brian Lewis. “So, it’s not something that’s unexpected or shocking to me. It’s just Kevin being Kevin.”

She also offered an opinion on how she thinks her son reacted to the tough Game 3 loss in Milwaukee.

“He finds a way to just dig in and pull out even more from himself,” Wanda said. “Knowing him, he’s taking the loss on himself. It’s a team sport, but as competitive as he is, he’s evaluating what he could’ve done, or what he should’ve done a little differently. So he begins to strategize in his mind on what he can do.”

Wanda also said she regrets how people think they know her son, but do not.

“That’s the one thing I get disheartened about is that people don’t take the time to accept what he says about himself,” Wanda said. “There’s a narrative that sometimes people want to place him in. And no matter what it is that he does, how he plays, where he plays, what he doesn’t say or does say, they have to make it fit.”

Kevin of course famously called his mother “the Real MVP” when he accepted the Maurice Podoloff Trophy in 2014. Now, Wanda runs a charity named the Real MVP. It seems right.

• Kevin Durant’s mom provides touching view of her famous son - Brian Lewis - New York Post