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.

A five-year-old clip from KD’s appearance on the Million Dollaz Worth of Game podcast recirculated this week, picking up enough traction to draw coverage from multiple outlets, featuring him explaining why he viewed the Dub Nation as an “underdog franchise” before signing with them in the summer of 2016. With X having become a fraught platform for him following months of burner account scrutiny, Durant allegedly turned to Instagram to respond:

“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, more pointedly, the same team that had just eliminated his Oklahoma City Thunder after blowing a 3-1 Western Conference Finals lead. The team had won 73 regular-season games, and calling them “underdog” did not sit right with 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.”

Historically, Durant’s read on the franchise isn’t wrong. Decades of irrelevance plagued the franchise prior to the rise of Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green. Between 1995 and 2012, the Warriors made the playoffs exactly once- the celebrated 2007 “We Believe” run that produced a first-round upset of the top-seeded Dallas Mavericks before quickly fading.

Aside from that flash of life and a championship 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 this argument still hasn’t expired a decade after the signing is the timing.

By 2016, the Warriors had broken the league’s competitive balance and were widely considered the pre-season favorites to win the 2017 title before Durant ever agreed to join. That’s not identifying an underdog. That’s boarding a dynasty.

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. The Warriors won a title before Durant arrived (2015) and another after he left (2022) – which is why 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. In Brooklyn, a superteam built alongside James Harden and Kyrie Irving fractured before it ever fully formed.

Harden was traded mid-season in 2022, and the Celtics swept the Nets out of the first round that spring.

In Phoenix, Durant arrived via trade in February 2023, watched the Nuggets sweep the Suns in the second round, and requested a way out shortly after.

Both stints left him without a ring outside of the Golden State environment- and in each case, ended in some form of institutional fracture.

The Houston chapter was the most deliberate attempt to build something real. After a massive 7-team blockbuster trade brought him to Houston in the summer of 2025, Durant averaged 26.0 points, 5.5 rebounds, and 4.8 assists during the regular season.

But it ultimately imploded after the alleged @gethigher77 burner account scandal, which surfaced during All-Star Weekend and was never truly resolved inside the locker room, per ESPN’s reporting, and a first-round playoff exit against a short-handed Lakers squad missing Luka Doncic.

Durant suffered a bone bruise that kept him out of five of six playoff games- without him, the Rockets’ young core won two consecutive elimination games before ultimately falling in Game 6.

A decade into the debate, Durant is still defending the Warriors’ decision. Now, allegedly from a different platform, with a deleted comment, after a season that proved the pattern travels with him. He can change the app. But fans won’t let him change the argument.