Annoyed, Kevin Durant gets carried away with the European players, Evan Fournier reacts!

Following Nikola Jokic’s second consecutive coronation as MVP, a US journalist has delivered a big claim about European players. This did not please Kevin Durant at all, and also prompted Evan Fournier to deliver his impartial opinion!

In addition to the double signed by Nikola Jokic, the ballot for the MVP 2022 proved historic for the NBA. Indeed, for the first time in history, three non-American players have won the first three places in the voting rankings, namely the Joker, Joel Embiid and Giannis Antetokounmpo. A fact that has not gone unnoticed across the Atlantic, and which has led to the birth of a great heated debate.

KD reframes an analyst on the Europeans, Fournier validates

Following this plebiscite for the foreign contingent of the NBA, and faced with the rise of European players in the league, Ekam Nagra sought to justify this phenomenon in the podcast Ball Don’t Stop. And according to him, the withdrawal of American players is due to a difference in approach from training, which would explain this recent change in the balance of power:

The reason guys like Luka (Doncic) and Jokic have taken the league by storm is that they come from the European development system. There, the importance is placed on skills and basketball IQ. They weren’t conditioned to chase fame.

A somewhat reductive vision of American prospects, who, according to the latter, would only seek to attract the eye of scouts by putting on a show, while forgetting to work on certain important aspects of their game.

This speech, moreover, turned out to be a little too far-fetched in the eyes of Kevin Durantwho quickly wanted to restore the truth in a comment on Instagram!

How many foreign players have arrived here and had to go back to where they came from because they couldn’t survive? Using Luka and Jokic being anomalies makes me think you just want to get the wrong idea across.

However, do not believe that KD was the only one to rebel against this statement. Still on Insta, Evan Fournier also reacted to it, again believing that the journalist is magnifying the line, and trying a little too much to criticize the American training system:

I agree that the priority is on the fundamentals of the game (in Europe), but there are tons of things that North America is way ahead of us on. In a perfect world, we should try to get the best of both worlds.

After to have illustrated themselves in a tense sequence during a recent New York derby, it would therefore seem that Durant and Fournier agree on this subject. Like what, it is always possible to find common ground, even between great rivals!

Disagreeing with too sharp a comparison between young European and American players, Kevin Durant and Evan Fournier immediately delivered their very different vision of things. It remains to be seen which camp the majority of the NBA community is on!