Begs the question
A North Carolina teen is getting national attention after getting Kevin Durant to reveal the real reasons why he left the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Cole Cashwell’s reward for igniting the biggest story in sports? Fourth period ecology.
On Wednesday, his teacher let the class out about five minutes early at Cary High School – about 20 minutes west of Raleigh, North Carolina, – so the shaggy-haired junior had time to talk. Cashwell doesn’t have class on Thursdays, so he’ll probably go to his friend’s house and fire up NBA 2K18 on Xbox again.
Cashwell, a rabid basketball fan, was playing the game on Sunday, minutes before Kevin Durant sent two tweets in response to his honest question. Those two tweets revealed more about Durant’s reasons for leaving Oklahoma City in free agency than a year’s worth of leaks and feature stories.
Cole Cashwell just turned 16 on Monday. Whether he meant it or not, he’s responsible for getting the truth about Durant’s departure from the Thunder.
“I was really astounded,” Cashwell said. “I didn’t expect him to do anything like that. I’d heard of him responding to fans before, but I didn’t think he’d respond to me.”
Cashwell was at home in his room Sunday playing 2K18 and group chatting on Xbox when he stopped to check Twitter on his phone. He can’t explain why he tweeted at Durant. Maybe the popular basketball game inspired him.
“Man I respect the hell outta you,” he tweeted at @kdtrey5, Durant’s account. “…but give me one legitimate reason for leaving okc other than getting a championship.”
In his apology on Tuesday in San Francisco, Durant claimed he was joking when he tweeted the shockingly candid third-person reply which immediately went viral: “He didn’t like the organization or playing for Billy Donovan. His roster wasn’t that good, it was just him and russ (Westbrook). Imagine taking russ off that team, see how bad they were. Kd can’t win a championship with those cats.”
Cashwell said he didn’t initially understand the significance of Durant’s response until the flood of messages.
“At first, I didn’t even notice he was talking about himself in the third person,” Cashwell said. “And then people started tweeting me ‘you just exposed KD.’
“I was really confused for a minute or two.”
So was the world. Cashwell’s mother, Caryl, was working her job as a hostess at a restaurant in Cary, but had to call home when she saw her son’s tweet on ESPN. Tweets bombarded Cole’s timeline from people thinking he was one of Durant’s fake Twitter accounts. Durant admitted to having an extra Instagram account, but didn’t own up to any other aliases on Twitter.
Durant came out on Tuesday and said his tweets were “childish” and that he was disappointed in himself following the crush of media attention.
It hasn’t exactly been a media frenzy for Cole. After all, this wasn’t intentional.
Before Wednesday, he’d done an interview for The Ringer and a Brazilian sports magazine. That’s it. His phone died during the second interview.
When you ask Cole why he decided to ask Durant the question, he stumbles for an answer.
“I looked at Twitter and it was spur of the moment thing,” he said. “I didn’t have a specific reason to do it.”
There’s a kaleidoscope of sports fandom to Cole which fits the spontaneity of his question, the randomness of his short and sudden fame. He stands between 6-foot-1 and 6-2 but plays basketball and football leisurely. His Twitter photo is a pair of bright yellow LeBron 12 sneakers, but he roots for the Los Angeles Clippers because when he started watching basketball they had players from the University of North Carolina and WinstonSalem native Chris Paul. Cole’s father, Kent, did contract work in Baltimore, so Cole loves the Ravens and Orioles.
Cole’s brief career in journalism is probably over, but he’s excited about his future. He’s carrying a grade point average above 3.0 and plans to study marine biology at UNC-Wilmington.
But like many teens with the world ahead of them, when you ask Cole what he’s going to do the next day, he’s still unsure.
“I don’t really know what else I can do,” he said before breaking into a grin you can hear through the phone.
“Try to expose another NBA player?”