KD ON CRITICS: F*** EM

Kevin Durant has responded to the flack he copped for pulling out of the Team USA programme this summer.

The reigning MVP says the decision wasn’t due to Paul George-induced injury concerns, or negotiations with Nike over his ENORMOUS sneaker deal.

It was instead down to him wanting to be fresh for the upcoming season. And if you don’t agree or understand, he doesn’t care:

“It was a very hard choice, because I wanted to play,” he said. “If it was just games (with Team USA), like straight games, it would have been perfect. But the travel and the practice and the shoot-a-rounds, it was something where I (said), ‘All right, I’ve got to really scale back a little bit and get ready for our season.’

“I love Coach K (Mike Krzyzewski) and (program director) Mr. (Jerry) Colangelo, because they understood everything. I didn’t want it to overshadow what they were doing, so that’s why I kind of felt bad about it. But at the same time, I knew I had to do it for myself, and this was one of the first decisions basketball-wise that was like, ‘All right, this is just for me. I’m worried about me right now. I was a little selfish, and sometimes that makes people, it made a lot of people, uncomfortable.”

And to those who don’t agree or understand? […] “Seriously, to be honest, I was like ‘(expletive) ‘em.’ You can write that, too. Seriously, though. I’m just going to be me, man, and that’s how I felt. … I was happy I took the hits, like, ‘All right, that’s going to teach me to be strong and not worry about what everybody has got to say.’ I heard it all — ‘you don’t care about your country’ to ‘you’re soft’ to all of that. Well I don’t care. These people don’t know me. They don’t know the work I’ve put in. They don’t know that I’ve done (the FIBA tournament) before, so it made me stronger.”