CJ McCollum and Kevin Durant Traded Insults Online Tonight, and It Lit Up NBA Twitter

McCollum called KD "soft," then Durant called him a snake.

Trail Blazers face the Golden State Warriors on April 22, 2017 at the Moda Center. Bruce Ely / Trail Blazers
By Matthew Singer

In case you haven't been paying attention, the NBA offseason has been wild.

The Lakers landed LeBron James, then for some reason proceeded to sign every player in the league who has ever feuded with him. Paul George decided to stay in Oklahoma City because Russell Westbrook threw him a surprise party, while Kawhi Leonard got deported to Canada. Meanwhile, the reigning champion Golden State Warriors casually went out and added yet another All-Star to their already impossibly stacked roster, center DeMarcus Cousins.

And the Blazers…well, they are still here.

Resigning Jusuf Nurkic to a team-friendly contract was good, losing Ed Davis was bad, and signing Nik Stauskas and the Other Curry was…*shrug emoji.*

Last night, however, with the offseason approaching its dog days, the Blazers were at the center of the conversation among hardcore hoops-heads. As usual, though, it had nothing to do with anything the front office did.

It started a day earlier, on CJ McCollum's Pull Up podcast. His guest was Golden State forward and two-time Finals MVP Kevin Durant, who, as you might recall, joined the Warriors in 2016 in a controversial move that'll likely be debated until he retires, and then for some time after that.

Speaking for pretty much every NBA fan outside the Bay Area, McCollum expressed his frustration with the Warriors landing Cousins for a measly $5 million. Here are the relevant parts of the back-and-forth, courtesy of CBS Sports:

Durant: "Why are you mad about this stuff?"

McCollum: "Bro, I'm in the league. What do you mean why am I mad about this stuff? I'm in the Western Conference. I gotta play you MFers all the time anyway as it is, over and over again. We got eliminated by y'all a few times in the first round. So I'm looking at [Cousins] —"

Durant: "I mean … you know you guys aren't going to win a championship?"

McCollum: "Bro, we have the team. We have the capabilities. Anything is possible. We can win a championship, bro. … We were right there at the top of things. We were the third seed last year, bro. 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: "How'd you play?"

McCollum: "Some unfortunate circumstances."

Durant: "Like an eight seed."

On the podcast, the exchange comes across like fairly amiable ribbing. But then the next day, on Twitter, some bro from Barstool Sports just had to stir the pot.

"Hey @CJMcCollum permission to start using the B word again for KD?" he asked. To which McCollum responded:

A convoluted analogy, to be sure. But if there's anything we know about Kevin Durant, it's that he's Very Much Online—sometimes undercover—and isn't one to let perceived social media slights just disappear into his timeline:

For NBA fans anticipating facing that interminable two and a half month stretch between the end of the free agency frenzy and the start of pre-season, this is the kind of stuff you want to hook directly into your veins. And the Twittersphere responded in kind:

Durant whined a little bit more, while McCollum tried to stop the beef in its tracks, while also clarifying that he is not, nor has he ever been, reptilian in nature:

How will this all play out on the court?

We'll just have to wait and—wait, I'm getting word that the Warriors have somehow already swept the Blazers out of next year's playoffs. Oh well, we all had fun for one night, right?

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