Kevin Durant and Gary Payton had an interesting encounter on Friday during the Phoenix Suns’ victory over the Golden State Warriors. The two basketball legends engaged in some heated exchanges that caught the attention of fans.
Despite the arena noise drowning out their words, a video later surfaced on social media revealing their conversation:
Durant: “You up here, I’m at the ceiling.”
Payton: “I’m on the roof.”
Durant: “By the time you were my age, you were the eighth man on the bench.”
While Durant may have misjudged Payton’s career, the exchange was all in good fun. Payton clarified to ESPN that it was just friendly banter, and Durant expressed his admiration for the older generation of players:
“It’s always good rapport with the older generation,” Durant said. “They respect me. I respect what they’ve done. But there’s some players that still got that competitive edge and wish they were still out there and still keep that with them everywhere they go. That’s GP, and I respect that about him. So any time, any chance I get to see him, man, we going to talk this trash until we die. It’s all love.
“G’s a great sport about it — one of my favorite players, somebody I look up to, got major respect for. I think we started in the summer with Team USA. We were all in the same room with Team USA, and the first thing I said to him was that he couldn’t guard me. ‘You’re too small. Them dudes that played back in the day wasn’t close to me.’ I was just talking crazy to him, so I guess we picked it up from there.”
Despite the friendly exchange, Durant put up a solid performance with 19 points, six rebounds, and three assists. Devin Booker led all scorers with 31 points in the game.