By Stefan Acevski / info@eurohoops.net
Alperen Sengun recently completed his fifth season with the Houston Rockets, the second in which the Texas franchise reached the NBA playoffs.
However, once again this year, Houston was stopped in the first round by the Los Angeles Lakers, in a season where fans expected a breakthrough.
Sengun is currently preparing for the new season and managed to give an interview to “Socrates Dergi”, where he touched on numerous interesting topics.
One of them was his relationship with Kevin Durant, which garnered much public interest.
“A perception suddenly formed out of nowhere. I’ve never had an argument with KD, not even once. We’ve never raised our voices at each other. We always talk, and we always talk after games, too. We especially talked after games we lost. Like, “What are we doing wrong?” I specifically would ask him, “What do we need to do? Where do you think we made mistakes today? Why didn’t it work out?” I ask him, and he answers. These things always happen, but like I said, because we’re people who hate losing… you can see that on our faces during games. You can read it on KD’s face. You can read it on my face. You can read it on Ime’s face.
KD also has a massive fanbase. I think about it like this. My fans will never view me negatively. I notice this. Like, there are areas where I perform poorly, and I see that myself. But, say, I’m talking to someone on the phone — they’ll always blame others. I’m not that kind of person, though. I always hold myself accountable. I don’t speak like that with anyone — whether it’s a friend or family member. When things like that are discussed, I always say, “That’s not how the situation actually is.” Do you get me? I can’t ease my conscience by shifting the blame to someone else. I don’t like those kinds of excuses, and you can’t get any better that way.”
Sengun also talked about his relationship with Ime Udoka, the head coach. There has been much discussion about this relationship, and Sengun pointed to an online controversy surrounding a postgame quote from Ime Udoka regarding Sengun’s pick-and-roll defense.
“When I first saw that press conference, what Udoka said didn’t hurt or upset me at all. Because I’m very close with Ime, I know what he meant in that statement. So it didn’t bother me in the slightest. What he actually meant was that even if I become the best defender in the league five years from now, they’re still going to target me anyway. It’s been that way since he first arrived (in Houston).It’s just that because we suffered a tough loss in that game and the postgame atmosphere was tense, they asked him at such a moment, and since he was a bit frustrated, he answered like that. But because I actually know him personally, I never took it that way. Though of course, social media spun it in that direction, unfortunately.”
The Turkish player also admitted in the interview that he deactivated X due to negative comments on social media.
“When we lost games, everyone looking from the outside tried to attack us and find any small thing they could pick on. They tried to pit us against each other. Attacking me through the coach. Because there are so many people out there who want to see us fail, you know? That’s actually why I deleted Twitter. After a certain point, I said, ‘What a dangerous place this is.’ It really drains a person mentally. It makes you second-guess and think, ‘Could something that isn’t real actually be true?’ Such wild things came out.”
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