Over the years, Kevin Durant has had multiple responses defending his legacy on the Golden State Warriors move. The 2x Finals MVP has had his fair share of online confrontations with fans, and another example seemingly emerged. It was a five-year-old video clip that has resurfaced, featuring KD explaining why he viewed the Dub Nation as an “underdog franchise” before signing with them in the summer of 2016.

As fans flooded social media to dissect, mock, and dismantle his logic, Kevin Durant usually uses Twitter (formerly X) to stop any wrong notion about him. This time he allegedly used Instagram to set the record straight: “NBA fans are infatuated with everything I say, these guys go watch interviews from 5 years ago to get content. Btw I still feel the same way I did 5 years ago. Argue with me.”

The comment is now deleted, so no way to check if it was actually true. But the comments from five years ago are true, and fans were not interested in listening to the narrative. When Durant made his initial free-agency move, he was joining a powerhouse that had won the 2015 NBA Championship and fell just one game short of repeating in 2016. team had won 73 regular-season games, and calling them “underdog” did not sit right with the fans. But Kevin Durant’s perspective on the situation is far more nuanced than a simple glance at the 2016 standings.

“I didn’t have no relationship with nobody on the Warriors,” Durant had said 5 years ago on the Million Dollaz Worth of Game podcast. “I never hung out with Draymond. Like that wasn’t my boy. Steph never hung out. It wasn’t like, ‘Let me call my boys up, let me hang out with my boys.’ I saw that’s a great team that wants to win, fun environment, great city. Oakland is like D.C. It felt like I was riding through Southeast. The organization has never been a winning organization. When I was in the league, nobody liked Golden State. So it still felt like an underdog to me because I’m looking at the totality of the franchise; I ain’t looking at what happened these last five years.

“You’ve never been a perennial winner in the NBA—from the ’50s on up. So I’m like, ‘Damn, that’s an underdog franchise to me.’ This feels good. Like, sh–, this feels like where I’m supposed to be. It ain’t L.A. It ain’t New York. It feels like where I’m supposed to be.”

Now from a historical standpoint, Kevin Durant’s assessment of the Warriors’ totality isn’t entirely wrong. Decades of irrelevance plagued the franchise prior to the rise of Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green. Aside from the isolated magic of the 2007 “We Believe” team and a championship run in 1975, the franchise spent the better part of forty years as an NBA afterthought.

That’s why they were not giants of the game, like the Los Angeles Lakers, the Boston Celtics, or even the New York Knicks, in terms of cultural prestige. But where the disconnect lies and why fans continue to argue with Durant five years after the interview and a decade after the signing is the timing. By 2016, the Warriors had broken the league’s competitive balance and were ready to dominate for years.

Why Kevin Durant’s legacy remains in question

NBA legends and analysts frequently use the “bus driver” vs. “bus rider” analogy to describe championship leadership. Because the Warriors won a title before Durant arrived (2015) and another after he left (2022). So many argue he hopped onto Stephen Curry’s team rather than being the driver of his own championship bus.

Durant attempted to construct his own championship foundations with the Brooklyn Nets and the Phoenix Suns. Both stints collapsed due to internal drama, early playoff exits, or sweeps, leaving him without a ring outside of the Golden State environment. Even the past season with the Houston Rockets ended in despair.

After a massive 7-team blockbuster trade brought him to Houston in the summer of 2025, the partnership delivered elite regular-season production. But it ultimately imploded into locker room dysfunction after a public burner account scandal and a swift first-round playoff exit.