Kevin Durant wants out. again. But why? ESPN’s senior NBA insider Adrian Wojnarowski can point to at least one reason contributing to Durant’s frustration: The Golden State Warriors winning another NBA Finals.
After news of Durant’s trade request broke, Wojnarowski took to SportsCenter Thursday night to share his thoughts on what prompted the decision from Durant.
“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,” Wojnarowski said.
After the Warriors defeated the Boston Celtics in six games, a flood of criticism did indeed come for Durant and his legacy. Many pundits questioned the legitimacy of his two rings, both of which came with the Warriors.
“[Durant]’s gonna have to win a championship as the bus driver,” Charles Barkley, former NBA MVP and current TNT analyst, said. “He joined that [Warriors] team that already won a championship, so no disrespect, that’s just a fact. So until he is the guy on a championship team, we’re not going to give him the respect that he probably deserves and that’s just the way it is.”
Durant, who signed with the Golden State Warriors after they finished the 2015-16 NBA season with a historic 73-9 record and bounced Durant’s Thunder in the playoffs before falling in the Finals, did not take kindly to Barkeley’s words.
“All this s— is nasty, another terrible analogy from a hatin old head that can’t accept that we making more bread than them,” Durant responded in a tweet. “It’s just timing Chucky, don’t hate the playa.”
Other people were even more blunt in their criticism, tweeting things like “The Splash Bros didn’t really need a Kevin Durant to win more rings,” and “Congrats to the Golden State Warriors. When do Durant’s ‘rings’ get melted down?”
One fan reduced Durant to “the guy between Harrison Barnes and Andrew Wiggins,” which the NBA superstar responded to by playing into the jab.
Durant has a history of struggling with online criticism, even turning to a burner account at times to deal with the hate. This time around, though, it appears his solution was a trade request.
The former NBA MVP had other reasons, including alleged frustrations with the Nets’ front office, but TV talking heads and random fans also reportedly contributing to trade request is amusing, if not terribly surprising.