Kevin Durant blasts fans who lost sports bets 'because of him'

The National Basketball Association (NBA) in the United States has embraced sports gambling and with it, there has been a new stream of revenue for the organization. Yet, with sports gambling taking off well across the United States, with some 30-odd states and the District of Columbia legalizing in-person and mobile sports wagers, athletes have come under fire from irate fans who have lost bets on their performance.

This has been going on for a while now, and apparently, not everyone is taking it in stride. Kevin Durant, the Phoenix Suns’ forward, has vituperated against online criticism of his recent performance. He said that he would much rather not hear from people who had lost money on him, and he offered a sound argument as to why:

"When I get ya paid, u don't DM me and send a small percentage to my CashApp but when them parlays don't hit, I'm every name in the book. Y'all ain't real," Durant said in a brief statement on X, previously Twitter. Fans have been piling on against athletes who have cost them money in what has become borderline online abuse.

Of course, the issue is not entirely new, and bad-mouthed or upset bettors have always dominated social media clamor, but the fact is that more athletes are beginning to speak out against the problem. Durant is just one in a line of players to share his two-penny’s worth and blast the individuals who feel that the athlete owes them, without reciprocity.

College stars have also come under a lot of flak with college betting quickly becoming legal in many states across the USA. Bettors would even get livid over athletes ruining "the spread" for them. Spread betting is a point-difference wager that people place not so much on who would win the actual game but whether a team would win or lose by a certain number of points, usually +2 or +3 in most cases.

So, a team may win (orlose) and still get online flak for closing the game at a certain point difference. Other sports suffer from the issue as well. Some bettors even turn up at events and heckle athletes, such as the recent case of Robert MacIntyre who apparently uncured the wrath of a disgruntled fan turned a losing bettor earlier this year.

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