Kevin Durant and the Golden State Warriors might have parted ways after the 2019 NBA Finals, but fans will never forget his time with the Dubs. There are both good and bad reasons why KD will be remembered as a Dub.
When he arrived at the team, the Warriors were coming off a 73-9 season and were fresh off, blowing up a 3-1 lead against the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2016 NBA Finals. But at the time, nobody thought that the Warriors were in need of a player of Kevin Durant’s skills to join a team that already had three All-Star level players.
So when Durant joined the team, it instantly shifted the balance of power in the league towards the Warriors for the foreseeable future. Durant was absolutely destroyed for that move by NBA fans. They insulted him in all sorts of ways possible.
But after KD left the Warriors, many believed that the Dubs would not recover from it and their days of winning NBA rings were over. Coming to the 2021-22 NBA season, Stephen Curry led the Warriors to their fourth ring in the last eight seasons. As for KD? He recently asked for a trade out of the Brooklyn Nets.
NBA analyst and insider Adrian Wojnarowski believes that the Warriors winning a championship definitely played a role in KD’s decision to demand a trade amid other things.
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“The expectations having walked away from that Golden State team, I think in the end were overwhelming. … When you talk to people around Kevin Durant and the Nets—Golden State winning the championship this season, and just the flood of criticism and second-guessing that landed on Kevin Durant, I think it contributed to a tipping point. He wanted to get Kyrie Irving a long-term deal in Brooklyn, wanted to help him get him that. He wasn’t able to. And I think once Irving opted back into [his player option], you know, Durant hadn’t talked to the organization in weeks. Neither Kevin Durant nor Kyrie Irving, since Kyrie opted into the deal had been in communication. There was a sense of inevitability around the Nets and around the league that this day was coming.”
As Woj mentioned, the expectations from KD were at an all-time high after leaving the Warriors. Fans disregarded his rings with the Warriors and wanted him to prove that he could actually win a championship while leading his team.
Well, as it turns out, KD failed to do so even with the exact team that he wanted around him. The Warriors, on the other hand? They had two poor seasons but are back to their best now. Maybe KD will join a Western Conference team to defeat the Dubs before the NBA Finals and once again try to prove his worth to the NBA community.
