Kevin Durant is still not over criticism of jumping ship to the Warriors

He cannot let it go
Kevin Durant, Golden State Warriors
Kevin Durant, Golden State Warriors | Ezra Shaw/GettyImages

This upcoming season will be the 10th NBA season since Kevin Durant joined the Golden State Warriors. Time has not healed all wounds, however, as Durant revealed that he is still not over the criticism directed at him for joining the Warriors and winning two championships.

Netflix just debuted Season 2 of their hit documentary series Starting 5, and one of the players they followed last season was Kevin Durant. The former MVP is long gone from the Warriors, of course, having spent time in Brooklyn and Phoenix before joining the Houston Rockets this past summer.

The distance from his Warriors tenure has not brought peace to Durant. His decision to join Golden State in the summer of 2016 was not only shocking, it was widely panned. The Warriors were coming off of a 73-win season, and while they lost in the NBA Finals to LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers, they were one of the title favorites heading into the 2016-17 season merely by maintaining the roster that they had.

They didn't stand pat, of course, making one of the biggest free agency signings in NBA history. The salary cap spike and Stephen Curry's bargain contract allowed the team to sign a max player, and they prevailed upon Durant to join them and win the title he could never quite get to in Oklahoma City.

Every level of criticism was lobbed at Durant. He was a bandwagon star trying to get a title in a cheap way. That he got beat by the Warriors and instead of being good enough to take them down he joined them. That no matter what happened in Golden State those titles would never be "his" because he was riding Stephen Curry's coattails.

Durant did everything that he could have hoped to do with the Warriors, going to three-straight NBA Finals in the three seasons he spent in The Bay. Golden State won two championships and Durant was named Finals MVP each time. He came to win, and win they did.

The Starting 5 documentary went back to those years and not only collected criticism of the time, they interviewed media and found those opinions were still prevalent. Colin Cowherd brought up that Curry and Draymond Green, not Durant, were the heart of those Warriors teams. From a certain standpoint, that is certainly true -- and without question, Curry was the most popular and loved player on those teams.

The criticism from Charles Barkley, however, hit the hardest. A master at stumbling into an opinion and then squeezing it for all it's worth, Barkley cooked up a metaphor for Durant's time in Golden State: bus riding. "If you ain't driving the bus, don't walk about talking about being a champion." When pressed, Barkley made it clear: Kevin Durant was a bus rider, not the bus driver for those Warriors title teams.

Kevin Durant fired back at Charles Barkley

When Starting 5 revisited that criticism, Durant was ready with the clap back. "I done rode the bus, I done filled the gas tank up, I was the gas, I was the wheels, the axles, the brakes...I was behind the bus pushing that m******* *****!"

Kevin Durant averaged 30, 7 and 4.5 across three seasons of playoff games in Golden State, he dispatched the best player in the league in LeBron James twice, and together with Stephen Curry and Draymond Green and Klay Thompson and Andre Iguodala put together some of the greatest playoff teams in NBA history. Riding, driving -- the bus they were on was one of the best buses ever seen.

Barkley, it could be noted, never won even a single title, driving or riding the bus. Perhaps he is salty about not getting to play with a player like Stephen Curry. Yet despite having two championship rings, Kevin Durant is still salty about the criticism of Barkley and others.

Starting 5's second season doesn't follow a player on the Warriors, but by following Durant and unpacking his story a slice of Golden State lore is being examined afresh. This beef was rehashed in the very first episode; more is certainly to come.