The NBA superstars and Olympic gold medalists were joined by Jalen Rose at the inaugural Fanatics Fest for a live conversation on being teammates in Paris.
Fanatics Fest 2024 brought out some of the biggest names in sports and entertainment. Fans from all over congregated at the Javits Convention Center in New York City over the weekend for the first annual ultimate festival for their chance to play games, win prizes, and chop it up with their favorite athletes or entertainers such as Travis Scott, Jalen Brunson, Tom Brady, and IShowSpeed, to name a few.
One of the many events over the weekend was a sitdown discussion between NBA superstars and Team USA teammates Kevin Durant and Anthony Edwards. Jalen Rose joined the Olympic gold medalists on stage to introduce and moderate the candid back-and-forth between Durant and Edwards. The competitors-turned-teammates for the summer talked about many topics, including what it was like to win gold in Paris, who’s the best on the sticks at Call of Duty, and everything in between.
“The team was so much fun to be around — dudes like Ant, Steph, LeBron, AD, the whole crew, man. It was just fun traveling the world with them, talking life with them, talking basketball with them. I had a great time.”
Rose dove into the dynamic between KD and Edwards at the beginning of the discussion, touching on the fact that Durant has long been one of Edwards’ favorite players. The two hit it off instantly on the court, with Ant reliving the sequence in which his childhood hero threw him a lob for the alley-oop in their first Olympic run together against Serbia.
While it may sound easy to put a couple of the best players in the world on the court and find instant success, Edwards admitted to having to change his mindset at times while suiting up for the United States.
“It just depends on who’s on the floor. If I’m on the floor with Steph, Bron, and KD, I know I got to defer,” he said. “But if it’s just me and KD, I’ll defer to him a little bit, but he was giving me the ball, so I was having a great time.”
Durant would go on to talk about the dynamic in the locker room for Team USA, singling Ant-Man out as one of the funnier guys on the squad.
“Ant was probably the biggest jokester in the locker room,” Durant said. “He had all the funny sayings that we picked up on. … We talked about everything, from sports to music to what we like to do to what we got in our cribs. It was just good being around the brightest of the brightest minds in the NBA, some of the most successful dudes in the league. … I miss it.”
Be sure to catch the full conversation between Durant, Edwards, and Rose at Fanatics Fest on Boardroom’s YouTube page here.
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