Kevin Durant Announced Ruptured Achilles Right After Steve Kerr Had 'No Update'
Kevin Durant announced on Instagram that he underwent surgery to repair a ruptured right Achilles tendon on Wednesday.
That announcement came just 25 minutes after Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr boldly announced the team had no update on Durant.
Kerr on KD: “We don’t have any news on Kevin right now ... as soon as we have some updates we’ll let you know.”
— Nick Friedell (@NickFriedell) June 12, 2019
And this is what many were questioning:
Another thing: The #Warriors, not 25 minutes ago, said there's no update on Kevin Durant and thought there was no chance he could injure his Achilles by returning. 10 minutes later, KD posts this, confirming the Achilles tear and successful surgery. Did he not tell them? https://t.co/I3GmKzghh8
— Tomer Azarly (@TomerAzarly) June 12, 2019
It was an odd scene. Durant flew to New York to get his Achilles looked at on Tuesday, then on Wednesday the Warriors announced there was no news. There are three possibilities here and only one is a good look for the Warriors.
The first possibility is Kerr was refusing to update the media until Durant had the opportunity to announce the news himself. The Warriors knew all along and were going to let their star announce the injury officially when he was ready to.
The second is Durant found out the extent of the injury on Tuesday, didn’t tell the Warriors and underwent surgery before giving them an update. Which would signal a pretty significant rift between the two parties.
And the third is the Warriors knew the diagnosis but had no idea Durant was undergoing surgery and would be announcing it on its own. They chose to keep the diagnosis secret and would announce the surgery when they knew it was set to happen.
The most likely possibility is the first. The Warriors were just allowing Durant to make the announcement when he was ready. Unfortunately, I don’t think they expected him to announce it right after Kerr’s press conference. The timing was just bad.