NBA All-Star weekend has come and gone, and though the game itself was surprisingly spirited, the most intriguing development of the weekend was the strange story of some leaked DMs from a pair of anonymous Twitter accounts that people connected to those accounts say belong to Kevin Durant.
You will hopefully forgive the vagueness there, as we don't really know if Durant is behind the accounts. But also, including proper nouns doesn't make the story much easier to follow: A Twitter user named Pranav Sriraman made a post about how much he disliked the design of the Larry O'Brien trophy, which drew a counter-complaint about the posture of complaining itself from Durant, which Sriraman countered by asking Durant about his investment in Skydio, which sells drones to the IDF, which Durant dodged, only for user @basedfrog23 to make their only post detailing what they say are the DMs of "KDF." Other users eventually posted more DMs, in which the accounts talked all kinds of crazy shit.
My co-host Harry Krinsky spent the past 24 hours feverishly DMing as many people connected to the saga as possible, and though none of them agreed to come on Nothing But Respect with the protection of a voice distorter, he learned a lot. Additionally, we were able to wrangle Eamon Whalen to talk through all angles of the saga, most notably the way Durant's Skydio investment has mostly not been talked about, leaving it to disgruntled Twitter anons to do the work of calling him out.
Eamon is from Minneapolis, so we also talked about the occupation of the city by ICE, the ways in which athletes have and have not met the moment, and why the murder of Alex Pretti got so many athletes to speak out for the first time in what feels like six years. For those curious about the link between 2020 and 2026, Eamon's reporting on the PMC-ification of private security is essential reading.
You can find Nothing But Respect in Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast app you use. Thanks for listening!
