Kevin Durant is adamant that he “earned” his rings with Warriors
Kevin Durant played with the Golden State Warriors for three seasons, helping lead to the team to two NBA Championships, the only two of his career.
A four-time scoring champion and seven-time All-Star when he left Oklahoma City, small forward Kevin Durant was one of the NBA’s best players when he joined the Golden State Warriors back in the 2016 offseason.
Many thought his addition to Golden State created an unfair accumulation of talent. They weren’t wrong as the Warriors went on to coast to two straight championships. Without any injuries, they would’ve made it a third as well.
Durant’s legacy, before he joined Golden State, was set. He was one of the best scorers in NBA history. His size, his length, his release, and his efficiency all made him an absolutely unguardable talent.
With the Warriors already having won a title in 2015 and then winning a historic 73 games in 2016, many think Durant took the easy way out, especially after the Warriors eliminated his Thunder.
He doesn’t think that. He believes he earned his titles given his dominance in his two trips to the NBA Finals. Here’s what we had to say on the matter.
“And I played at an elite level in the Finals in all the biggest moments. And I could understood if I didn’t play well at all. But I played the best that I could play in both Finals for that team. So, I felt like I got up every day and held myself to a championship, elite-player standard and reached it pretty much 98 percent of the time in practice and games and shootarounds. So, yeah, of course, I earned that,” Durant said on The Old Man and the Three podcast.
Durant put up over 28 points per game in the two postseason runs in which he was completely healthy. In his 2018 trip to the Finals, a clean four-game sweep of the Cavaliers, Durant averaged 28.8 points, 10.8 rebounds, and 7.5 assists per game.
There’s no denying he was a crucial part of the team. Without Durant, the Warriors still would’ve had a shot at the Finals, but it would’ve been nowhere near as easy of a postseason trip as it was with the superstar.
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Having left for Brooklyn, Durant is still having to defend his legacy. But, when you get into the conversation as one of the best in the generation, these questions will always surface.