Report: The Wizards Have Checked Out Of The Kevin Durant Sweepstakes

After all that—after all the campaigning and hashtags and t-shirts that were supposed to help bring Kevin Durant back to D.C. to play for his hometown team—the Washington Wizards are just throwing in the towel.

Durant will reportedly be meeting with six NBA teams after he enters free agency this week, and the Wizards will not be one of them. According to CSN Mid-Atlantic, the team is not even trying to secure a meeting anymore:

While it’s evident that the Wizards aren’t in Kevin Durant’s plans for free agency, they aren’t holding out hope to make a pitch just for appearance sake. They’ve moved on, and league sources tell CSNmidatlantic.com on Monday that the idea of returning home just “doesn’t resonate” with the NBA’s hottest unrestricted free agent.

There’ll be no meeting.

This news will particularly sting those Wizards fans who went out of their way to try and lure Durant to D.C. during the last few seasons. Many of them showed up to home games against the Thunder decked out in Durant gear, cheering on their ostensible opponent. In November, Durant himself called the practice disrespectful:

“It was cool to see all my family there but if our team did that to somebody coming into our arena, I wouldn’t like it. I didn’t really like it,” Durant told reporters after practice in Oklahoma City. “We’re playing a really good team in the Wizards, a great team. Great young talents. Good coach. I think that was disrespectful so I didn’t like it.”

So if you are a Wizards fan and you know somebody that cheered on Durant at a home game and constantly peppered the star with #KD2DC tweets, feel free to take out all of your anger on that person. Give them a dead arm.

Photo via AP

[ CSN]