Photo Credit: Michael Rapaport/Instagram
Michael Rapaport is a known courtside NBA fan and sh** talker so for him and Kevin Durant to get into it on Twitter, would come as no surprise to anyone. For the exchange to lead to Durant getting a $50,000 fine for something Rapaport started is a bit extreme, even for basketball’s biggest troll.
“I feel bad about it,” Rapaport said on Instagram shortly after Durant was issued the fine. “I feel bad about my involvement in the situation. I feel bad that it’s gotten this far. I met him one time. It was cool, cordial. I’m a fan. I met him as a fan.”
So let’s discuss the actual messages that were sent. They involved Durant calling him a c*ck sucker and a c*nt. Now I refuse to believe a 32 year old black guy from Seat Pleasant, MD called somebody either one of those words. As someone from the same county he is from, the thought of that is hysterical. I am willing to pay money for anyone who can find someone from that area who regularly uses either word in insults. The only person I can even think of in our age group that does this is Delano Edwards and he’s a comedian.
I receive threats and disgusting messages DAILY, but never in my wildest dreams did I think @KDTrey5 would be among them. The 🐍 himself is now threatening me, bringing up my wife and wants to fight. This is supposed to be America’s sweetheart right? #ImDaRealMVP pic.twitter.com/l1VQfGMMRF
— MichaelRapaport (@MichaelRapaport) March 30, 2021
The DM’ed insults came because Rapaport said Durant had gotten too “sensitive” in a Charles Barkley interview from last December. “This whole thing got way way way more attention than I thought it would,” Rapaport went on to say. “The funny thing is he actually had reached out to me about doing something that I call on social media ‘The Shame Game’ — putting people who talk s— on social media on blast. That was actually the way we met.”
“It’s not the first time I’ve posted people’s (direct messages),” Rapaport said. “It’s funny, when people are saying anti-Semitic things about me, saying racist things about me, threatening me, and they are Joe Schmos, everybody loves it. But when it was Durant, people have 400 opinions: ‘I’m a rat.’ F— all that rat s—.”
Durant responded by saying the two “talk CRAZIER than this on the regular” and pretty much summed it all up as friendly banter.
“That’s not locker-room talk,” Rapaport said. “Those are threats that were made over and over and over. It’s been going on for months. On Tuesday of this week, he caught me on a bad day. That being said, in my opinion, the whole situation got blown out of proportion. I don’t premeditate or contrive my behavior or my rants on social media. They come from the gut.
“I know I have lived and learned from this situation,” Rapaport said. “I’ve had to deal with ramifications that I’ll keep to myself. I know he has. I feel bad about it. But it is what it is, and we have to move forward.”
We’re just going to say that no matter what was sent, the fact a full on $50,000 fine had to come out of it is ridiculous and quite indicative as to how people constantly compare these sports leagues to slavery. They’re both grown men that can handle themselves. As we said earlier, Rapaport even feels this has gone too far. On another note, I am sure I have sent worse to people for trolling and couldn’t imagine this type of absurd punishment.
