Five or six years ago, Kevin Durant was one of the most beloved and respected players around the NBA. The fans saw him as a true competitor, a leader, and a guy that could lead any team to the ultimate stage.
But when Durant decided to leave the Oklahoma City Thunder to join a Golden State Warriors team that was coming off winning 73 regular-season games, the whole narrative around him changed drastically.
People started calling Durant a snake, claiming that he was killing the league's competitiveness and just wanted a free ride to the NBA Finals, and he instantly became the biggest villain in basketball.
Kevin Durant Says He Joined The Warriors To Make It To The NBA Finals Again
That's why, for years, Durant had kept his reasons to himself. It was obvious that he wanted to have a shot at winning a ring - which is fair - but it wasn't until a couple of days ago when he finally admitted it:
“At 23, my fifth year in the league, we went to the Finals. After that, we didn’t go back again. But that first experience of me going there it was just like ‘nah, I need to experience that again, I wanna be on that stage again.’ That run that we went in 2012, from that first round to the Finals, that was the most fun I ever had playing basketball. And I was like ‘I need this experience again.’ I don’t care who it was with. I just needed to experience that again, cause I felt more alive, like this is what I should be doing on earth at this point," Durant confessed on the Million Dollaz Worth of Game podcast.
At the end of the day, you can say that Durant took an easier path to a ring and that's valid, but you can't say that his rings aren't earned. If anything, he made a good team even better and rose up to the occasion by winning 2 Finals MVPs.
