Kevin Durant is one of the greatest players to ever lace them up. That’s undeniable, but also is the fact that he’s always felt like he’s not getting the respect he deserves.
It happened back in the Draft, when he was taken 2nd overall. It happened again in the NBA Finals when he came up short vs. the Miami Heat, and it happened all over again with the Golden State Warriors even though he won back-to-back Championships and Finals MVPs.
That’s why Draymond Green felt as if Durant’s attitude completely changed after they beat LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2016-17 NBA Finals. Durant was coming off an outstanding series and winning a Finals MVP and his first-ever Championship, yet all the narrative was “LeBron is still the best”:
“We won a Championship, Kevin won a Finals MVP. In my opinion, he got the best of Bron in that series. I mean, Kevin was f–cking rockin’. And we go on and honestly after that it was the moment that Kevin should be the best player in the NBA now because of what he just did to LeBron. And it’s like you turn on the TV the next day and the f–king headline is like ‘LeBron James is still the best player in the world’. You got all these people debating and everybody still says LeBron is the best player in the world. That’s when I kinda felt like he took a turn and then we came back to the 2017-18 season and Kevin just wasn’t as happy you know? (…) all of a sudden he was just like ‘why did you take that f–king shot? why didn’t you pass the f–king ball”, Green told Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson in All The Smoke.
The rest, as you may know by now, it’s history. Durant felt like an outsider at the Bay and that he’ll never truly belong to the team. He didn’t consider himself a part of the dynasty, even though he knew he was one of the main reasons why they succeeded.
Don’t get me wrong, Kevin Durant is by no means underrated. He’s unanimously considered one of the best players in the history of the game. However, it feels like nothing is enough to put him at the top of the rankings, and that’s a burden he’ll have to live with unless he makes sure to turn the narrative on his favor.
