Kevin Durant Makes Bold Claim About His Stint With The Golden State Warriors

Kevin Durant has a résumé that most NBA players can only dream of. But for the toughest basketball critics out there, his legacy as a winner in the league is questionable. In particular, the circumstances surrounding Durant’s greatest individual accomplishments have caused all sorts of asterisks and question marks to affect his reputation.

In a recent interview with Sports Illustrated, Durant went straight to the heart of this discussion. Clad in a Houston Rockets jersey (which happens to be the fifth NBA jersey that he’s worn in his career), KD was asked if he viewed himself as late-2000s Kobe Bryant, who badly wanted to win an NBA title without Shaquille O’Neal in the Los Angeles Lakers lineup.

“Do you have that type of chip on your shoulder to win without Steph and Golden State?” the interviewer asked.

Durant, who drew plenty of criticism for winning two NBA championships by teaming up with Curry’s powerhouse Warriors squad, quietly shook his head. “If I wasn’t the Finals MVP like Kobe was with Shaq… then I would say, yeah, I need to prove I can do that on that level,” he responded. “But I’ve done that on that level.”

To Durant’s credit, he was a true difference-maker in the late 2010s when he came to Golden State following their Finals loss to LeBron James’ Cleveland Cavaliers. The arrival of Durant turned a well-oiled Warriors machine into a downright juggernaut on the offensive end. The future Hall of Famer averaged a scintillating 35.2 points per game in the 2017 Finals, and he followed that up with 28.8 points per outing in the 2018 championship series.

Still, critics like Charles Barkley have said over the years that Durant was not the “bus driver” on a loaded Warriors squad that was still predicated on the greatness of Curry. While Durant has never expressed personal resentment toward the NBA’s all-time leader in three-pointers made, he insisted that his legacy was not affected by the fact that Curry was by his side in Golden State.

“I never looked at Steph as Shaq and me as Kobe,” Durant said. “He proved that he could play on that level, and I proved that I could play on that level at the same time.”

It should be noted, of course, that Bryant went on to win an NBA championship and two Finals MVPs without O’Neal in 2009 and 2010. Durant, meanwhile, has not been able to return to the Finals since leaving Golden State in 2019.

Is Durant one of the greatest winners in NBA history? This debate, it seems, will continue to rage on.