Saturday 20th April 2024,

Kevin Durant Doesn’t Want You to Call Golden State Warriors a Superteam

admin June 15, 2017 Blogs No Comments

Kevin Durant

Yes the Golden State Warriors are a superteam.

No, Kevin Durant doesn’t want you calling them that.

From the San Francisco Chronicle‘s Connor Letourneau:

“First of all, if everybody wanted Steph, he would have been the No. 1 pick,” Durant said Wednesday of Curry, the No. 7 pick of the 2009 NBA draft. “A lot of people passed on him. A lot of people doubted Steph, saying he wasn’t going to be this good. Klay Thompson, he was just supposed to be this OK shooter in the league, like that’s what you thought of Klay Thompson when he came in. Draymond, nobody wanted him. He was a 6-5 power forward. (They said) he couldn’t play in the league, he couldn’t start in the NBA. Shaun Livingston had a crazy knee injury.

“Nobody wanted him. Nobody thought that that he would get back to being Shaun Livingston. Andre Iguodala, he got traded a couple of times. Nobody wanted him. A lot of people didn’t expect these guys to be where they are today. Super team? No, we just work extremely well together.”

Okay, so, Durant has a point. Sort of.

His argument in favor of the Warriors’ core is spot-on. The use of “superteam” implies that a squad was built overnight, or at least that a lion’s share of their nucleus was acquired via free agency, in their primes. The Warriors picked up Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green in the draft. They took a shot on Shaun Livingston in free agency. They went for a glue guy, rather than a patented star, in Andre Iguodala. Last year’s team, with Harrison Barnes, was a home-grown superpower.

Things changed this year, though. The Warriors added Kevin Durant, a top-five player, after winning 73 games. That makes them a superteam. They didn’t buy this title, but they’re not the indomitable force they are now, with teams wondering how to beat them for the next half-decade, if he’s not on the roster.

It took a perfect storm of events for this to happen—developments mostly tied to the Warriors’ ability to unearth their own star-level talent. Like it or not, however, they forfeited the right to brush off superteam designations the moment Durant joined the party. It doesn’t taint this year’s title or any of their future accomplishments. It’s just a fact.