{"id":729,"date":"2014-08-07T18:48:50","date_gmt":"2014-08-07T22:48:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nba\/?p=729"},"modified":"2014-08-07T18:48:50","modified_gmt":"2014-08-07T22:48:50","slug":"kevin-durant-withdrawls-from-team-usa-prior-to-fiba-world-cup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nba\/2014\/08\/07\/kevin-durant-withdrawls-from-team-usa-prior-to-fiba-world-cup\/","title":{"rendered":"Kevin Durant withdrawls from Team USA prior to FIBA World Cup"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure id=\"attachment_730\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-730\" style=\"width: 594px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nba\/files\/2014\/08\/kevindurant.jpg\" alt=\"Getty Images\" width=\"594\" height=\"401\" class=\"size-full wp-image-730\" srcset=\"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nba\/files\/2014\/08\/kevindurant.jpg 594w, https:\/\/tireball.com\/nba\/files\/2014\/08\/kevindurant-300x202.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 594px) 100vw, 594px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-730\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure><br \/>\nNBA MVP Kevin Durant has withdrawn his name from consideration for Team USA prior to the FIBA World Cup.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This was an extremely difficult decision as I take great pride in representing our country,&#8221; Durant said in a statement released on Thursday. &#8220;I know that I owe it to my USA Basketball teammates to be totally invested in the experience. After going through training camp with USAB, I realized I could not fulfill my responsibilities to the team from both a time and energy standpoint.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I need to take a step back and take some time away, both mentally and physically in order to prepare for the upcoming NBA season. I will be rooting for USAB and look forward to future opportunities with them.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>There are 15 finalist for Team USA leading up to the FIBA World Cup which will be held Aug. 30 to Sept. 14 in Spain.<\/p>\n<p>Additionally Nike, Adidas and Under Armour are all attempting to sign Durant to endorsement deals which could pay him upwards of $30 million annually.<\/p>\n<p>Durant is scheduled to make a hair under $19 million with the Oklahoma City Thunder this season and will top $20 million with them next season before becoming a free agent in 2016.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NBA MVP Kevin Durant has withdrawn his name from consideration for Team USA prior to the FIBA World Cup. &#8220;This was an extremely difficult decision as I take great pride in representing our country,&#8221; Durant said in a statement released on Thursday. &#8220;I know that I owe it to my USA Basketball teammates to be [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":730,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,11],"tags":[12,68,5],"coauthors":[7],"class_list":{"0":"post-729","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba-news","8":"category-nba-topstory","9":"tag-front","10":"tag-kevin-durant","11":"tag-nba"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=729"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":731,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729\/revisions\/731"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=729"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tireball.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}