Thunder center Enes Kanter offered no apologies for comments about his time in Utah, even after Saturday’s loss to the Jazz, reports Royce Young of ESPN.com. Kanter, who was traded from Utah to Oklahoma City on February 19th, was loudly jeered by the Salt Lake City crowd, starting in warmups. He had incited the crowd’s wrath with a statement that he didn’t enjoy his time in the NBA until he got to the Thunder. “The boos didn’t mean nothing to me,” Kanter said. “It was just a regular game. I never felt like I was a part of this thing, so it was just a regular game. We came and we leave and that is it. I am not taking nothing back.”
There’s more from Oklahoma City:
- The Thunder had a plan for keeping Kanter, who will be a restricted free agent this summer, when they brought him in from Utah, writes Jon Hamm of The Oklahoman. He expects Kanter to land a deal somewhere in the range of $88MM over five years.
- History hasn’t been kind to big men with foot problems like Kevin Durant‘s, according to Mike Monroe of The San Antonio Express-News. The Thunder announced this week that Durant will have bone graft surgery on his right foot and will be sidelined for four to six months. Citing Bill Walton, Sam Bowie and Yao Ming as examples, Monroe noted that foot injuries can be career killers.
- Durant isn’t the team’s only injury concern, Young writes in a separate story. Andre Roberson, Nick Collison and Serge Ibaka are all currently out of action, and every player on the team’s roster in training camp has missed games with injuries. “When you lose KD, Serge, Andre, Nick, you’re not a better team overnight,” said coach Scott Brooks, “but you still have to work on ways you can put yourself in position to win and our guys have done a good job of that.”