PHOENIX — Long, languid strides brought Kevin Durant, the 13-time All-Star in all-black, from one end of Footprint Arena’s court to a chair at its middle Thursday. A personal highlight reel played on a jumbotron overhead, and a midday crowd packed into one side of the arena’s lower bowl howled at the sight of him.
Durant gripped a microphone in his left hand, opened his mouth and tried uttering his first public words as a Phoenix Sun since a trade last week ended Brooklyn’s super-team experiment. But a crowd estimated around 3,000, revved up by a T-shirt toss featuring the franchise’s gorilla mascot and the prospect of a long-sought championship, let him go no further, their chants of “KD, KD” forcing the player so often impossible to stop to pause.
He hopes to return from a knee injury soon after the league’s All-Star break, later this month, he said, and when he does, he will be accompanied by the pressure he has come to expect being “one of the best players to ever play the game.”
