When one looks at Brooklyn Nets star Kevin Durant’s career, one will see two championships, two finals MVP awards, and a regular season MVP award. Overall, on paper, he has had an amazing career and is for sure going to the Hall of Fame when he decides to hang up his sneakers.
However, some view Durant’s career a bit differently. Current Hall of Famer Charles Barkley said Durant was a failure for not winning a championship while being “the guy”. His two titles with the Golden State Warriors are not viewed the same as he was playing with the likes of Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson out in The Bay Area.
Another Hall of Famer, big man Shaquille O’Neal, agreed that Durant is not viewed as a success in the eyes of the older players due to how he went about winning his championships:
If you go back and look at his career as a best player being the leader, all goes with that too. We were all there. We saw OKC up 3-1. One more game and when you’re the guy, all the pressure goes on you. A lot of people was talking about the bus driver. Chuck was absolutely right. He was not driving the bus in Golden State. You were on the bus. You were sitting up front.
So when guys like us go ‘Woah, woah, woah, woah’ and you win and we don’t respect it, don’t get mad at us. That’s how we feel. This is the attitude that Kevin Durant is gonna say, ‘Whoa, I got this many points and I got this and I got that.’ We’re not talking about that. We’re talking about you, the guy, and in championship moments, can you take it to that next level? We haven’t seen that yet.
“Charles Barkley is calling Kevin Durant’s career outside of Golden State an ‘abject failure’ … Do you agree?”@SHAQ: “Yeah. … If you’re the guy and you ain’t get it done, that means you failed.”#TheBigPodcast: https://t.co/1ccPgWJWvs pic.twitter.com/7RiqPAoUDu
— NBA on TNT (@NBAonTNT) September 1, 2022
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Durant and the Nets will have all eyes on them as they head into the 2022-23 season after a tumultuous summer where the star requested a trade in June, but nothing ever materialized. Brooklyn will have high expectations of winning a title in this upcoming season so this will be another chance for Durant to prove O’Neal and Barkley wrong on the floor.
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