A lot of the top tier players in the NBA today grew up idolizing Kobe Bryant. Most of these players tried to model their game after the five-time NBA champion and believe he’s one of the greatest players of all time.
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One current superstar that has always praised Kobe is reigning NBA MVP Kevin Durant. The face of the Oklahoma City Thunder franchise recently came to Kobe’s defense on Twitter. Someone on the social network alluded to the fact that a lot of Kobe’s success can be attributed to playing alongside Shaquille O’Neal.
Durant quickly agreed with @StaxxFifth who made the argument that Kobe came 19 points shy of Wilt Chamberlain’s record of a 100 points in a game. Durant simply said the following on his Twitter account:
“facts”
After a few ridiculous responses downplaying Kobe’s 81 points back in 2006, Durant continued to defend the fellow superstar with the following response:
“u just throwing that around like scoring 80 is scoring 20 lol.”
As arguments tend to do on Twitter, the replies kept coming and Durant kept firing shots back. Most athletes of Durant’s caliber don’t go too far into arguments like these because they simply don’t end, but the perennial All-Star felt compelled to continuing backup up his former Team USA teammate:
“we talking about Kobe not anybody else. He’s one of the greatest.”
It’s clear that Durant has a lot of respect for Kobe with the responses given. It didn’t end with Durant dubbing the Los Angeles Lakers star as “one of the greatest” as he let it be known it is no easy task to do what Kobe did playing on the NBA level:
“this ain’t the pits league or watts. This real structured basketball..”
Durant also defended Kobe’s ability to score 81 points on 46 shots:
“81 on 46 shots is pretty damn good. U want him to shoot 20 shots to get 80?”
Ironically enough, Durant is the one player in the league that might have a chance at scoring 80 points or more at some point during his career. The Thunder star has become the best scorer in the league over the last few years with Kobe basically passing the torch to the 25-year-old.
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Despite Durant’s best efforts to defend the future Hall of Famer, the responses were endless and he had to stop at some point. The reigning MVP became frustrated with Twitter a few weeks ago with the star forward saying he deleted the app on his phone, but this constant battle may have pushed him even further away from using arguably the most popular social media platform amongst athletes.
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