{"id":521590,"date":"2026-01-07T02:58:33","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T02:58:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/521590\/"},"modified":"2026-01-07T02:58:33","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T02:58:33","slug":"kevin-durant-says-game-winner-over-suns-meant-more-after-feeling-scapegoated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/521590\/","title":{"rendered":"Kevin Durant Says Game-Winner Over Suns Meant More After Feeling &#8216;Scapegoated&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>            Play video content<\/p>\n<p>                    <img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/195aa28f20aa4794b4e9888f7e270361_md.jpg\" alt=\"010626_kevin_durant_kal\" width=\"728\" height=\"410\" class=\"img-fluid\"\/><\/p>\n<p>                    Houston Rockets<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tmz.com\/people\/kevin-durant\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Kevin Durant<\/a> has hit plenty of game-winning shots over the course of his career &#8230; but Monday&#8217;s dagger against the Phoenix Suns had extra meaning &#8212; with KD admitting it hit different after feeling &#8220;scapegoated&#8221; by his former squad.<\/p>\n<p>Durant spoke about the moment with the media shortly after the Rockets&#8217; 100-97 win over the Suns.<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">KEVIN DURANT CALLED GAME AND TOLD THE SUNS TO GO HOME \ud83d\ude2d <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/fQ4snB5LSt\" rel=\"nofollow\">pic.twitter.com\/fQ4snB5LSt<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 BrickCenter (@BrickCenter_) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BrickCenter_\/status\/2008382588302270685?ref_src=twsrc^tfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">January 6, 2026<\/a><br \/>\n              <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BrickCenter_\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">@BrickCenter_<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The 37-year-old said it &#8220;most definitely&#8221; had more meaning than the average game-winning shot, especially since he said he had no desire to leave the team before the July 2025 trade.<\/p>\n<p><a id=\"continued\" class=\"continued-anchor\"\/><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t mean to sound too dramatic, but I will,&#8221; Durant said. &#8220;To be kicked out of a place and felt like I&#8217;d been scapegoated for the issues we had as a team last year, yeah it felt good to beat them and hit a game-winning shot.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He made it clear, though &#8230; while he will enjoy the moment for the night &#8212; &#8220;tomorrow I wouldn&#8217;t even think about it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Despite his feelings towards the Suns and how his tenure ended, it&#8217;s clear he&#8217;s loving his time in Houston, saying he&#8217;s &#8220;grateful in representing the Rockets&#8221; after fans showered him with MVP chants.<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Kevin Durant on the MVP chants.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Being booed in here so many years, being an opposing player being booed, you know it feels good to come out here, I love Houston, I love Texas i&#8217;m just grateful in representing the Rockets.&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/3Ytxp136Kv\" rel=\"nofollow\">pic.twitter.com\/3Ytxp136Kv<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Rockets Clips (@Rockets_Clips) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Rockets_Clips\/status\/2008384596728074445?ref_src=twsrc^tfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">January 6, 2026<\/a><br \/>\n              <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Rockets_Clips\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">@Rockets_Clips<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Being booed in here so many years, being an opposing player being booed, you know it feels good to come out here, I love Houston, I love Texas,&#8221; Durant said.<\/p>\n<p>KD and the Rockets &#8212; who are currently fourth in the Western Conference &#8212; will get the day to rest and recover before taking on the Trail Blazers in Portland Wednesday night.<\/p>\n<p>      <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Play video content Houston Rockets Kevin Durant has hit plenty of game-winning shots over the course of his&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":521591,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3791],"tags":[7,6,67,2065,472,4045,66,83,604,2228],"class_list":{"0":"post-521590","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-phoenix-suns","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-phoenix","12":"tag-phoenix-suns","13":"tag-phoenixsuns","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-sports-news","16":"tag-suns","17":"tag-tmz-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115851579453851660","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}