We’re in an era where athletes are often commenting on specific elements of media coverage of them and questioning the individual reporters or commentators involved. That’s been seen a lot from the Phoenix Suns’ Kevin Durant over the years. The latest example there came Monday, where he pushed back on a report from ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne that described the Suns’ locker room as “toxic”:
Kevin Durant on ESPN report that Suns locker room has been “toxic”: “Yeah, I heard Ramona Shelburne come out and say our locker room is toxic. I try to tell people who aren’t around this game much is that it’s easy to say our locker room is not connected when you come in there 45… pic.twitter.com/SUkcGHmzGF
— Duane Rankin (@DuaneRankin) February 10, 2025
The comments Durant was reacting to came from Shelburne on ESPN’s NBA Today on Thursday. There, the show discussed the atmosphere around the Suns amidst their involvement in several trade rumors (which mostly didn’t pan out, except for their move to send Jusuf Nurkić and a 2026 first-round pick to the Charlotte Hornets for Cody Martin and guard Vasilije Micić and a 2026 second-round pick), including some around Durant and Bradley Beal.
Before getting to Shelburne, host Malika Andrews got Tim McMahon’s perspective. McMahon had covered the Suns’ 140-109 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder the night before, and he had lots to say about the “glum” atmosphere around the team with constant trade rumors and the trades not coming together:
Here's Tim McMahon on the Suns' locker room around a loss to Oklahoma City on Feb. 5. "The vibe, I would say in a word, glum." (From ESPN's "NBA Today" on Feb. 6.) pic.twitter.com/5p3bsWYK68
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) February 11, 2025
Andrews then went to Shelburne, and Shelburne built upon McMahon’s reporting with her own reporting from sources.
Here's Ramona Shelburne's Feb. 6 "NBA Today" discussion of the "toxic" atmosphere in the Suns' locker room, citing sources around the team and building on Tim McMahon calling it "glum." pic.twitter.com/Q484vq1WJu
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) February 11, 2025
“The word I would use, he used glum, I’ll use toxic,” Shelburne said. “That shootaround yesterday I heard was very awkward, very weird in Oklahoma City because everybody was on pins and needles wondering what they were going to do. Now you have this reset where, how do you move forward as a team when there was a clear mandate here that they have to do something?
“And if they’re not able to get anything done, which as we say, you talked about it in the open, it’s really hard to do something. The thing they were trying to do did not come to fruition because Kevin Durant said no. It’s hard to move forward, and I think that’s where they’re left.”
The thing with this particular reporting dust-up is that both sides’ points have some merit, but they’re somewhat talking about different things. Durant is correct that occasional looks into the Suns’ locker room 45 minutes before a game may not accurately reflect the team’s internal state. And he also is accurate that Shelburne, as a national reporter, isn’t around the Suns’ locker room on a consistent basis.
But Shelburne (who has decades of experience covering the NBA, first with The Los Angeles Daily News and then with ESPN) made it quite clear here that her remarks weren’t based on her own firsthand observations, but on talking to sources with or around the team. Now, “toxic” might have been her own word, as she didn’t attribute that to a source, but that’s still an assessment based on from perspectives relayed by sources.
And while it’s not certain what positions Shelburne’s sources hold, there’s a good chance they have as good or better of a sense of the mood in the locker room as even local media who are in that locker room more frequently. There are plenty of times when NBA locker rooms aren’t open to media. And if Shelburne’s sources are with the team, they could conceivably have more information on this that even someone who maximized every bit of allowed media access. (And it’s also worth noting that her report built on that immediately-preceding one of “glum” from McMahon, who was around the Suns in person at that time.)
Overall, any assessment of a team’s mood carries challenges. Analyzing any other individual’s mood from the outside is difficult enough, and that gets tougher still when expanded to a larger organization with many members that may have different perspectives. And Durant can of course question outside mood assessments, and he can question word choices like “toxic.”
But while Durant isn’t wrong that Shelburne isn’t around the Suns’ locker room as much as reporters assigned to cover that team, that isn’t really the issue here. She made it clear that this particular report was based on sources, not personal observations. So the “toxic” evaluation Durant complained about is likely, in at least some way (perhaps not in exactly those words, but in words that led to a “toxic” summing-up by Shelburne), coming from inside the house.
