ESPN Ranks Kevin Durant Eighth Best Player; He Tweets, Deletes Response

Disclaimer: Before Kevin Durant suffered a stress fracture that will keep him sidelined for approximately two months, ESPN ranked him as the second-best player in the NBA. In fact, ESPN NBA Rank voters nearly bestowed him a perfect score of 10.0 – KD’s pre-injury 9.94 was barely lower than LeBron James’ mark. But the worldwide leader polled their analysts again after Durant’s unfortunate break, asking them to account for negative impacts of his injury. Eighth-best is where that new assessment placed him. Not bad. But given Durant’s humorous – and since-deleted – response on Twitter, he isn’t exactly pleased with it, either.

While explaining the means of the reigning MVP’s six-spot slide, ESPN Director of Content Analytics Royce Webb harmlessly quipped that “instead of shooting jumpers, [Durant] is shooting selfies.”

Durant responded thusly before quickly deleting the tweet:

That’s a much more measured response than the one Kobe Bryant offered to his similarly injury-influenced NBA Rank. Now, let’s see if KD’s fans react the way Mamba’s did. For the sake of ESPN and general sanity, we certainly hope they don’t.

(H/T Bleacher Report)

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