Hunter Dickinson reveals impact of Kansas fans' negative comments on his love for basketball:'I didn't like playing'

During his days at both Michigan and Kansas, Hunter Dickinson was one of the most polarizing players in college basketball. Due to that, he generated plenty of haters who let him hear it on social media after bad games. And that has left an impression on Dickinson’s time at Kansas.

Dickinson recently joined the “Run Your Race Podcast” where he opened up on the fan backlash he heard during his two seasons at Kansas. While the Jayhawks were struggling on the floor, Dickinson heard plenty of it.

“They expect greatness,” Dickinson said of Kansas fans. “But the team, like, the team would just like — bro, like, we didn’t even feel like we had support. And again, it’s never as bad as it seems, like, we had great support. Allen (Fieldhouse) was always rocking and, like, we had a ton of fans that were supporting us, but we also had like, a ton of people who were just hatin’. Like, we would always make the joke, after we win a game, you go on Instagram and see how many comments we had. It’d be like, 30, 40 Instagram comments saying — and some of those would even be like, ‘Oh, we won a game, whoopty doo.’ On a loss, we would have like 500 comments. And so for me, like, it got to a point where I was like, I didn’t like playing.”

The trajectory of the Kansas program has certainly not been up to normal standards in recent years. A program that once dominated the Big 12 year-in and year-out, Kansas was 23-11 and 21-13 in Dickinson’s two seasons there. The Jayhawks did not win the Big 12 either year and they did not make it to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament either year.

It’s tough to blame Dickinson for the struggles. He averaged over 17 points and 10 rebounds per game in both of his years at Kansas and was an All-American in both seasons. But the lack of team success — as well as his reported large NIL agreement — didn’t stop the criticism and impacted how he felt about the game.

“We would come to the gym and it would feel such like a job,” Dickinson said. “Like, the games got to a point where it’s like, ‘Bro, I don’t even want to like play right now.’ And I was like, one of the ones that handled it better, like, so I can imagine how some of the dudes are feeling. It just got so bad to a point where — like, dudes were just like, you know, they were through with it. Obviously, it’s my last year. So like, I’m like, ‘Yo, we gotta try to fix it. But some dudes are just like, get me out of here, bro, we’re gonna hit the portal again.”