It’s the mother of all MVP days. Just ask Kevin Durant.
Durant spoke the words of offspring everywhere earlier this week when he effusively thanked his mom for being the source of all that he has come to be in dethroning LeBron James as the best hooper in the world, at least for this NBA season.
Not much different from the plight of moms all over the world, Wanda Pratt raised her children with an iron fist and a loving touch, toiling endless hours, sometimes on an empty stomach, all so that her youngest son might be filled with the promise of life’s greatest possibilities.
“I think I may have to wear shades to the game tonight because I have been crying ever since,” Pratt told reporters in the hours after her son delivered what easily rates as one of the most heartfelt and tear-jerking MVP speeches in league history.
The 46-year-old Pratt prides herself on having raised her two boys with little money, but everlasting riches. “I was 21 with two small children,” she told reporters. “I had to figure out how we were going to do this, how we were going to make it. I decided early on that my desires and wants and even needs came second to what they needed and wanted. That was my mindset.”
“Mama Durant’s” story is indeed legendary, but also representative of moms everywhere. “You made us believe, you kept us off the streets, put clothes on our backs, put food on the table,” a teary-eyed Durant reflected. “You the real MVP.”
To say that there would be no Kevin Durant without Wanda Pratt would be an understatement along the lines of waxing the league’s top scorer four of the last five years has been known to score a hoop or two.
The man who enjoyed a run of 41 straight games with at least 25 points this season and netted over 40 points on 14 different occasions, many of the performances without running mate Russell Westbrook in the lineup, still freely speaks of a time when as a seventh grader he had made up his mind to quit basketball and become “a street kid.” That is until moms got word of his short-lived thinking.
“Everything in my life, I had to take it,” Durant added during his crowning moment. “They’re not going to give it to you out of sympathy. I wouldn’t want it any other way. This was another case, if I wanted to win the MVP, I had to go take it. I felt that this was the year I did that.”
And Wanda Pratt almost had as much to do with her son’s rise as all those baskets, rebounds and assists he amassed this season did. “Kept us off the street, put clothes on our backs, food on the table,” the man who became the first player since Allen Iverson in the 2000-01 season to win both the scoring title and MVP award in the same season marveled of his mom as he accepted his award.
“When you didn’t eat, you made sure we ate,” he added. “You went to sleep hungry. You sacrificed for us. I don’t think you know what you did.”
Sure she did. It’s what mothers do every day and have been since the beginning of time.
Happy Mother’s Day, mom.
