Kevin Durant is one of the most polarizing figures in the NBA, and his time with the Golden State Warriors is often at the center of the discussion. When the Warriors won the NBA title without him last summer, Durant says he resented the fact that people were talking about him again.
In 2017 and 2018, Durant won back-to-back NBA championships with the Warriors, but he was accused of riding the coattails of a team that already had players like Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green.
“I hated that,” Durant said in an interview with The Washington Post. “Riding coattails? That’ll never happen when I’m playing basketball. Either I’m going to step back, so you can go ahead and do your thing, or I’m going to take control.
When the Warriors defeated the Boston Celtics in the 2022 NBA Finals, Durant felt like some of the discourse around that championship focused on Golden State being able to win without him on the roster. Durant didn’t mince words when talking about how that made him feel.
“I can’t lie: Watching the Finals, I knew so many people would turn their focus on me once they won. I was like, I hate that they won, because y’all not going to make it about them; it’s going to be all about me,” Durant said in an interview with The Post. “I think it’s just a childish way of looking at that experience. I feel like you can take it all in and appreciate what they did and not even talk about me. I was just sitting at home. But I get how it is.”
Despite the noise around him, Durant is still one of the NBA’s elite players. He is currently averaging 30.4 points, 6.6 rebounds, and 5.3 assists for the Brooklyn Nets, who sit in fourth place in the Eastern Conference.