Kevin Durant responded to Charles Barkley’s claim that he needs to be “the bus driver” of a championship team to earn respect from “the old heads.”
The Golden State Warriors are once again NBA Champions, which means that Kevin Durant will be discussed ad nauseam. Why? Because he left the Warriors in 2019 to join the Brooklyn Nets with Kyrie Irving, and they have yet to win an NBA title, let alone make it to the Finals.
Last Friday, Inside the NBA analyst Charles Barkley appeared on ESPN’s “Get Up,” and expressed his opinion that Durant will never get the respect from “the old heads,” unless he is “the bus driver” of a championship team.
Durant spotted the clip, which was shared after New Orleans Pelicans guard CJ McCollum gave his opinion on it, and responded to Barkley’s take.
Kevin Durant responds to Charles Barkley’s championship take
Durant joined the Warriors in the summer of 2016 after spending the start of his career with the Seattle SuperSonics/Oklahoma City Thunder. The move was ridiculed, who felt that Durant was hopping on the bandwagon to get an NBA Championship.
Yet, in the team’s three trips to the NBA Finals, they won two of them and Durant was named the Finals MVP in each of their series wins. That is the argument that McCollum was making, saying that Durant was the “bus driver” of those Warriors teams, especially in the Finals.
After the 2019 Finals, Durant signed with the Nets. He missed the first year of his contract as he recovered from a ruptured Achilles. The following season, the Nets made it to the Eastern Conference Semifinals, but lost in seven games to the eventual NBA Champions in the Milwaukee Bucks. Then this past season, the Nets were swept in the opening round by the Boston Celtics.
Barkley expressed his opinion regarding Durant, and the Nets star offered his rebuttal on Twitter.