When a team wins 73 games in a regular season, you expect it to already have everything it needs to compete for an NBA Championship. Well, that wasn’t the case for the Golden State Warriors.
After they were defeated by LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2016 NBA Finals, the Dubs were stunned. Despite having the best regular-season record in NBA history, they still couldn’t defeat LeBron James.
As a result, to further bolster their squad, they added one of the best scorers in NBA history in Kevin Durant. Arguably the second-best player in the league at the time, KD’s addition to the Warriors meant trouble for each and every team in the NBA. At one point, it simply felt like this was something straight out of an NBA 2K game.
But it was a reality and most teams were scratching their heads about how to stop the Dubs in their tracks. Former NBA forward Evan Turner recently spoke about how it felt facing a team that featured KD, Steph, Klay, and Draymond.
“It was unfair. It was a joke.” – @thekidet reflects to @andre and @SteveKerr about how tough it was for he and the rest of the NBA to have to play defense against a team that consisted of KD, Steph, Klay, & the rest of the Warriors.😂 @PointForward4
🏆 https://t.co/bbnmAf1epZ pic.twitter.com/OYaSQ1D4bI
— Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz (@LeBatardShow) June 24, 2022
“I remember we were in the preseason. I’m looking at Mo Harkless I’m like, ‘If he curls, switch this.’ I think it was KD taking the ball out. And I’m like, ‘We can switch this and switch that.’ And when I started looking around, it was KD, Klay, Steph, Dray, Dre. I’m like, ‘Bro, this is a joke! This is so unfair.’ We can’t switch anything. There’s no advantage to us… It literally ruined like four or five years of basketball, but in a good way.”
As Turner explained, KD’s move to the Warriors absolutely ruined the league for a few years. While it felt unfair to everyone, at the same time it was also exciting to watch some of the best players of this generation to play together.
It felt like a dream and the Dubs won two NBA Championships before Kevin Durant decided to leave the team and join the Brooklyn Nets. Fast forward to 2022, the Warriors have won another championship, this time without KD. But Durant’s Nets are unable to even make it to the NBA Finals.
