Kevin Durant and Mike Budenholzer had a moment but it wasn’t what you think

Communication, not chaos, was on display in the Suns latest win

Hold your horses. Ever stop and wonder where that phrase even comes from? There’s probably some deep-dive TikTok breaking it down, lurking in the algorithm, waiting for me to stumble upon it at 2 a.m. But for now, let’s just roll with it. Because Tuesday night, in the Phoenix Suns’ dramatic comeback win against the Los Angeles Clippers, we were all reminded to pump the brakes. Not just on the game’s outcome but on the narratives we spin in real-time.

This is the snap-and-post era, where every micro-moment can explode into a full-blown controversy before the final buzzer sounds. Case in point: a brief courtside exchange between Kevin Durant and Mike Budenholzer, which TNT threw out there like bait, hoping for a feeding frenzy.

In the clip, Budenholzer reaches out, places a hand on KD’s forearm as he heads toward the bench. Durant pulls back. He turns, shoots a look of frustration, and can be seen verbally replying to his coach. Hardly nuclear. And that’s it. That’s the whole thing. No dramatic monologue, no boiling-over tension. Just a moment. But in the hands of social media, a moment is all it takes.

Of course, when this happens, my phone starts lighting up with texts. “See? Look how disconnected this team is!” The doomsday crew, locked and loaded. And my response? Settle. Take a breath. Don’t be so reactionary.

I get the irony. Me, the guy who jumps on a postgame podcast after every single game and reacts to it — and sometimes overreacts — telling people not to overreact. But even I knew this clip wasn’t the smoking gun. The narratives about this team being disconnected and dysfunctional? Sure, they might have some merit to them. But this moment? This wasn’t the grand thesis statement of their problems. It was just a blip, a two-second exchange that meant nothing until social media tried to make it mean everything.

Kudos to Cameron Cox of 12 News for actually doing the legwork by posting the full video instead of the out-of-context bait. The clip showed the frustration at the end of the play, sure, but it also captured what came next: a disagreement turning into a conversation, a moment of tension flipping into a collaborative exchange. You know, the kind of thing that happens on every team, every game, without it being framed as the beginning of the end.

I said it last week, and I’ll say it again: communication is everything when it comes to team success. It’s not just what we say, and yeah, how we say it matters, but more than anything, it starts with the willingness to communicate in the first place. The care to communicate.

And that’s exactly what we saw Tuesday night. Two competitors, locked in, seeing something different on the floor and expressing it in the heat of the moment. Frustration? Sure. But dysfunction? Not even close. This wasn’t a team unraveling; it was a team engaged, working through the chaos in real-time.

Kevin Durant spoke about the moment after the game when asked by The Arizona Republic’s Duane Rankin.

“That’s what usually happens when you don’t know the dynamics of a relationship,” Durant said of the interaction. “You catch something on TV, you get a quote, and now you pushing that narrative as if me and blood don’t do that shit all the time. We competitors as two individuals who want to see things done the right way, and sometimes my way ain’t the way that B want to do it and vice versa. And he allows me, as a player on the team, a veteran on the team to voice my opinion. If I if we both didn’t care, we would not have stuff like that.”

“I’m glad that the win is going to sweep all that stupid stuff under the rug cuz they couldn’t people couldn’t wait,” he continued. “Even some people in Phoenix and here couldn’t wait to run with that, you know, and say, ‘Oh, this is this is the reason why the team ain’t playing well because that specific thing.’ But come on, man. That shows that Bud really care about trying to right this ship and trying to win basketball games. So, he understands where I’m coming from. I understand exactly where we coming from. It’s just people on the outside don’t know the dynamics of the relationship. So, you know, in order for them to get some attention, they going acceptable stuff like that”.

“I wish they cut to that and show that…when me and him come to solution together and we smiling on the bench and we tapping each other in the chest and slapping hands hard. I wish they would post that on Instagram and Twitter and say, ‘Wow, this lead this is leadership right here’,” Durant observed.

“But when we do that other shit, that’s the attention. That’s just the nature of the world we in. That’s the nature of content and the NBA in general so it’s frustrating when you see shit like that and you see reaction to it. This ain’t the first time we got into it. Not even got into it. We had a quick disagreement and moved right on right after the next play. It’s not going to be the last either. And B knows that. He know, he respects how much I care. I respect how much he cares.”

It was an impressive victory, full stop. And that one little moment between Budenholzer and Durant? Just a reminder to settle down. To resist the urge to jump to conclusions the way this world practically demands we do.

We take one fleeting moment and try to stretch it into the entire narrative, like a single frame can tell the whole story. But there are levels to everything. Context matters. And sometimes, what looks like a spark ready to burn everything down is really just a fire fueling something greater.

When it’s all said and done, this season might be a sunken cost. The road ahead is brutal. The Suns’ remaining opponents hold a combined .590 winning percentage. That’s just absurd. But moments like these, moments where communication is happening — even if it looks aggressive from the outside — are the kind that can turn into building blocks for future success.

Maybe that future won’t include this exact roster. Maybe these franchise cornerstones won’t be the same when the dust settles. There are tough decisions looming this offseason, and whether Mike Budenholzer and Kevin Durant will even be here to keep strengthening this dynamic is very much up in the air. But that’s a conversation for another day. But let’s hold our horses.

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