Kevin Durant MVP Speech

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Overview

Kevin Durant MVP Speech was a heartfelt speech given by professional basketball player Kevin Durant while accepting his Most Valuable Player (MVP) Award in May 2014.

Background

On May 6th, 2014, Durant gave an acceptance speech after being given an MVP Award, in which he thanked his teammates, coach, fans, the NBA, and God. At the end of the speech, Durant singled out his mother, thanking her for the sacrifices she made while raising him and referring to her as the "real mvp" (shown below at 25:20). The same day, the G4NBAVideosHD YouTube channel uploaded the speech in its entirety, which gained over 820,000 views and 990 comments in the first three weeks.

Notable Developments

News Media Coverage

In the coming days, several news sites published articles praising Durant's emotional speech, including USA Today,^[6] SB Nation,^[7] Washington Post,^[8] NBC Sports,^[9] Today^[10] and The Daily Mail.^[11]

"You Da Real MVP"

On May 6th, the @SportsCenter Twitter feed posted a tweet about Durant's speech, which highlighted the quote "You're the real MVP." The same day, Redditor lax4 submitted the tweet to the /r/nba^[4] subreddit. In three weeks, the tweet accumulated upwards of 4,300 retweets and the Reddit post garnered over 1,300 upvotes.

Kevin Durant's emotional tear-filled press conference punctuated with standing ovation for his mom, Wanda, "You're the real MVP."
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) May 6, 2014

On May 23rd, Redditor jwtj submitted a post asking "What is the MVP meme all about?" to the /r/OutOfTheLoop^[2] subreddit, to which several Redditors referenced Durant's acceptance speech. On May 19th, Redditor EyeGifUp submitted an image macro of Kevin Durant thanking people who allow others to use their Netflix accounts for being "the real MVP" to /r/funny^[3] (shown below). In the first nine days, the post gathered more than 18,100 upvotes and 360 comments.

On May 24th, Redditor thenation7 posted an image macro of Durant thanking houses that gave full-size candy bars to kids on Halloween, gaining upwards of 12,800 upvotes and 190 comments in four days (shown below, left). On May 27th, Redditor Baddabink submitted another Durant image macro thanking "whoever convinced girls to get naked for Internet points" (shown below, right). In the first 24 hours, the post received over 10,800 upvotes and 230 comments.