Phoenix Suns forward Kevin Durant hasn't quite shaken away his reputation as one of the league's villains ever since he spurned the Oklahoma City Thunder, the team he spent the first nine years of his career with, for the team that beat them in the 2016 playoffs, the Golden State Warriors, in free agency. Durant's move basically made a Warriors championship a foregone conclusion for a few years, nearly notching a three-peat if it weren't for their injury woes in 2019.
While the widespread frustration regarding Durant's free-agent decision is understandable from a parity point of view, some criticism towards the Suns forward seems to have gone overboard. And the future Hall of Famer has had enough with all the besmirching his name has been on the receiving end of since July 2016.
“Once I left to go to the Warriors, it’s been the gymnastics on how to discredit me every step of the way,” Durant said in an interview with Shams Charania of The Athletic. “Once I left to go to the Warriors (in 2016), I figured any logical thing, when it comes to me it’s out of the window.”
“You move the goalpost every time, you expect the most out of me and if I don’t reach it I’m a failure. It’s like, what’s the problem?”
Still, the Suns star knows that whatever he says or does to defend himself won't change the minds of those who have already written the narrative of his career in stone.
“After a while I was just like, they going to believe what they going to believe regardless. So there’s no need for me to even f— up their experience and try to shift and change the way they think about the situation. After a while, I was just like f**k it — you can think however you want to think. I know that’s just a part of it. I’m done trying to get you to understand who I am as a person and player,” Durant added.
While the vitriol towards the Suns forward has certainly simmered down since his Warriors days, expectations remain sky-high for one of the greatest scoring forwards — as they should be. Many pundits believe that for Durant to truly earn his flowers, he will have to lead a team to a championship as the team's best player, as the “bus driver”, so to speak.
But it's time to appreciate KD for who he is instead of taking greatness for granted while it's still at the (relative) height of its powers.
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