KD shares how Warriors tenure impacted his NBA legacy originally appeared on NBC Sports Bayarea
Kevin Durant, a 13-time NBA All-Star, two-time champion, two-time Finals MVP and one-time league MVP, doesn’t care what people think anymore.
“I don’t care about legacy,” Durant told The Athletic’s Shams Charania. “I used to. I used to want to carve out a lane or space in this game for myself that people can remember, but it’s become too much of a thing now. It just becomes too much of a focus on other people. What’s he done, what’s he done? Comparisons. Before, when we wasn’t doing all this debating, I cared about it … I’m about to be in the same breath as these top guys. It was big.
“Nowadays, I truly, truly don’t care. I truly just want to go out there and produce, be the best that I could be, go home, hang with my family, that’s it.”
Durant was drafted by the Seattle Supersonics in 2007, who later became the Oklahoma City Thunder, where he spent his first nine years in the league before joining forces with the dynasty in Golden State.
He spent three seasons and won two championships with the Warriors before leaving for the Brooklyn Nets in 2019, although an Achilles injury sidelined him until the 2020-21 season.
But things turned sour over this past offseason when he requested a trade from the Nets and asked the team to consider changing their head coach and general manager. The trade request eventually was put to the side, but when Durant’s teammate Kyrie Irving moved over to the Western Conference with the Dallas Mavericks, Durant followed.
“Once I left to go to the Warriors, I figured any logical thing, when it comes to me it’s out of the window,” Durant said. “When it comes to me, people are not going to think in a logical way or simply look at what I’ve done and say that’s it. They gotta add a narrative to it, they gotta push something to discredit me. Once I left to go to the Warriors, it’s been the gymnastics on how to discredit me every step of the way. It’s like, damn, that’s not even fun no more like engaging with people because y’all aren’t even being truthful. You move the goalpost every time, you expect the most out of me and if I don’t reach it I’m a failure. It’s like, what’s the problem?
“I don’t throw my s— at people. People want their own experience in the NBA. Their experience is their experience. I can’t say anything. I let it be. When some fan says, ‘KD,…