Kevin Durant has offered another look at why he saw Golden State differently than most of the NBA world did when he joined the Warriors in 2016.
Durant said he was not moving to the Bay Area because of close personal ties with the Warriors' stars. "I didn't have no relationship with nobody on the Warriors," he said. He added that he had not been hanging out with Draymond Green, Stephen Curry or Klay Thompson before the move.
His explanation leaned more on fit than friendship. Durant described Golden State as "a great team that wants to win," with a fun environment and a city he compared to D.C. Then came the line that will get the loudest reaction: he said the Warriors still felt like an underdog franchise to him.
Durant's point was that he was looking past the immediate five-year run and at the wider history of the organization. He said Golden State had not been a perennial winner from the 1950s on and did not feel like Los Angeles or New York.
That framing is hard to separate from the timing. Durant joined a Warriors core that had just won 73 regular-season games, then won two championships and two Finals MVP awards with Golden State.
No comments yet. Start the conversation.