Kevin Durant was the most recent guest on C.J. McCollum’s Pull Up podcast Wednesday. Durant was brutally honest with the Blazers guard when discussing the notion that Portland is a serious contender for an NBA title, laughing off the idea that they should be in the same conversation as the Warriors, and the notion that they had any hope of landing DeMarcus Cousins.
Here’s a partial transcript
McCollum: “You know how I felt bruh I was hot.”
Durant: (laughs)
McCollum: “I don’t know if I was more mad than when you went to Golden State, I think I was more mad when he did it.”
Durant: “Why are you mad about this stuff?”
McCollum: “Bruh I’m in the league what do you mean why am I mad about this stuff? I’m in the Western Conference. I’ve got to play you MF’ers all the time anyway as it is, over and over again. We’ve got eliminated by y’all a few times in the first round, so I’m looking at Cuz (Demarcus Cousins).”
Durant: “You know you guys aren’t going to win a championship.”
McCollum: “Bro we have the team.”
Durant: (laughs)
McCollum: “We have the capabilities, anything is possible. We can win a championship bruh.”
Durant: “I mean let’s be honest…”
McCollum: “We can win a championship, anything is possible.”
Durant: “I like y’all two (McCollum and Damian Lillard), you are hard to stop. But I mean, c’mon. You can be upset about this.”
McCollum: “I can be upset because Cuz was a free agent, which means he could’ve — this is also why I was upset — he could’ve came to Portland. He and Nurk (Jusuf Nurkic) have the same agent. So I’m thinking, “Okay, you’re not going to come to us, whatever. Why you gotta go there Cuz?’ And I texted him.”
Durant: (laughing)
McCollum: “I was mad, I got on Twitter.”
Durant: (laughing) Yo, get out your feelings.
McCollum: “I literally texted Cuz and I was like, ‘Cuz what’s up bruh?’ Like why’d this happen (laughs).”
Durant: (laughing) “You’re the first person I’d seen who had said something. I was crying on Twitter when I saw that.”
McCollum: “People thought I was playing, I for real texted Cuz and we talked, we hashed it out.”
Durant: “Yeah that was funny.”
McCollum: “I needed to know what was going on, I wanted to know why…”
Durant: “You wanted him to come to Portland?”
McCollum: “Brah I think that anything is possible. I’m just saying. You’re trying to get me in trouble. I’m happy with Nurk, Nurk is a great big man for us, he’s playing well.”
Durant: (laughs) “Okay…I mean you did just say on the airwaves, you might cut it out, you just said that he should’ve came to Portland. So you didn’t want Nurk?”
McCollum: “Of course I want Nurk.”
Durant: “But you rather DeMarcus?”
McCollum: “We can have both of them.”
Durant: “Y’all not getting both.”
McCollum: “Y’all only paid him $5 million, we had $12 to $15 million in cap space.”
Durant: “No way that’s happening. It’s got to have a nice yin and yang bro. It’s going to be too much of one thing with y’all. So stop that.”
McCollum: “What do you suggest?”
Durant: “I suggest you just keep playing man and don’t worry about what goes on at the top of things.”
McCollum: (laughs) “We were right there at the top of things, we were a third seed.”
Durant: “Relax.”
McCollum: “We were right there we were just slightly below one and two.”
Durant: “But how’d you play?”
McCollum: “Some unfortunate situations happened in the first round.”
Durant: “But how’d you play? Like an eight seed.”
(Both Laugh)
It could be awhile before Durant is invited back on the show…