Warriors reporter’s new book is full of bizarre gossip – SF Gate

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Ethan Strauss, a longtime Warriors reporter currently employed by The Athletic, released a book titled “The Victory Machine: The Making and Unmaking of the Warriors Dynasty” earlier this week. The book, which is very much worth reading (and which you can buy here, if you’re so inclined) is a revealing look at the egos at the center of an extremely talented basketball team. It is also full of many bits of insane gossip about the 2010s Warriors.

Much of this gossip centers around Kevin Durant, the mercurial superstar who joined the Warriors after the 2016 season. Strauss himself had a number of memorable interactions with Durant, who took issue with a story Strauss wrote in January of 2019 on how the Warriors had worked to integrate Durant into the offensive scheme.

“KD wasn’t impressed and accused me of trying to ‘rile up Steph’s fans,'” Strauss writes. “He expressed that this was a constant theme in the Bay. All of us local guys just wanted to kiss Steph’s ass at his expense. This was KD’s consistent lament. He would frequently squabble in direct-message conversations with the Warriors fans of Twitter, frequently accusing them of favoriting Steph at his expense. In one such exchange that foreshadowed things to come, he was asked by the WarriorsWorld account whether two-time MVP Steph Curry or Kyrie Irving was the better player. ‘I gotta really sit down and analyze it,’ Durant demurred.”

Strauss wasn’t the only media member directly confronted by Kevin Durant. Connor Letourneau, the Warriors beat reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, caught some heat after making comments on the relatively obscure podcast “Warriors Huddle” about Durant’s theoretical fit with Irving on the Knicks team.

“I’m just standing in the locker room near the door, on my phone and he is walking out of the locker room and he stops and he looks at me and he just goes, ‘Have I been good to you?,'” Letourneau told Strauss. “I’m like, ‘What do you mean have you been good to me?’ And he just keeps repeating himself over and over, ‘Have I been good to you? Have I been good to you?’ He’s kind of creeping towards me, and I have no idea what he’s upset about at this point. I have no idea what’s going on.”

In addition to stories about Durant’s sensitivity, there are also a number of amusing anecdotes about Warriors owner Joe Lacob.

“I once talked politics with Lacob, right after the 2016 election,” Strauss writes. “He hadn’t voted for Trump, but identified as a Republican voter. ‘When you make a lot of money, they try to take it,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t understand,’ he added, quite dismissively, and then walked over somewhere else without announcing the need to leave.”

These stories are just the tip of the iceberg. Once again, you can find Strauss’s book online here. It will be a nice reprieve for bored and nostalgic Warriors fans.

Michael Rosen is an SFGATE digital editor. Email: [email protected].

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