Written by: Jon Finkel
I interviewed almost all of the stars involved in the 2012 NBA Finals for a piece in Men’s Fitness about mindset and keeping your cool under pressure. Along with the other reporters, I lobbed questions at LeBron, Wade, Bosh and Durant, but none of my questions concerned the actual games. I was after the competitive mentality and how it’s controlled and harnessed. My interviews took place the day before the Thunder would ultimately be eliminated.
At the time, Durant’s image was largely of a happy-go-lucky, young future stud who was going to be a scoring machine for 15 years. But when I asked him about moral victories and what the Thunder could learn from getting to their first NBA Finals as a team, he flashed a look that was part anger, part resolve, part fluster. I realized then that his public image didn’t quite align with his private one. It was the look of someone pissed off that you’d question that anything other than complete and total victory would be acceptable. And this was his response:
“We didn’t get here [the Finals] just to say that we made it here. We want a title. It’s all about competing until that last buzzer sounds and that’s what we’re going to do. That’s the type of city we play for and that’s the type of team we are. We’re going to keep fighting and fighting and we’ll see what happens.”
He could have made the exact same quote last night after putting the Warriors in a 3-1 hole. Minus the direct reference to the Finals, he could probably have made that quote after every game this season. He has played the whole year (and really the last two) with the look he flashed me when I asked him about moral victories. It was the eye of the tiger, frankly. It was the look of a champion.
Just because the media moved on from KD and most of the fans outside of OKC spread their loyalty to Steph and Klay and the whole Splash Brothers traveling hoops clinic, don’t think for one second Durant has lost focus or gotten complacent. To win a championship, you have to cultivate and hold onto a championship mindset. There’s a lesson for us all in that.
Did you like this article? Sign up for my profiles and monthly round-up: http://bit.ly/21juoUt
Jon Finkel is the author of Forces of Character with 3x Super Bowl Champion and Fighter Pilot, Chad Hennings, Heart Over Height with 3x NBA Slam Dunk Champion Nate Robinson, as well as Jocks In Chief, the hit fatherhood book, The Dadvantage – Stay in Shape on No Sleep with No Time and No Equipment, and all twelve volumes in the Greatest Stars of the NBA book series for the National Basketball Association, which won several ALA Young Reader Awards.
As a feature writer, he has written for Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, Muscle & Fitness, GQ, Details, The New York Times, AskMen.com, ComedyCentral.com, Yahoo! Sports’ ThePostGame.com and many more. His work received a notable mention in the 2015 Best American Sports Writing anthology.