NBA fans and media might not see beauty in Kevin Durant’s time with the Brooklyn Nets, but that won’t stop him from appreciating the tenure.
Durant’s nearly four years in Brooklyn are widely viewed as a failure based on their inability to win more than one playoff series. The trio of Durant, Kyrie Irving and James Harden under Steve Nash as head coach played just 16 games together. And they were certainly dealt some unforeseen hurdles with injuries and COVID. But according to Durant, he still remembers there being more good times than bad in Brooklyn.
Part 2 of Durant’s interview with LeBron James and Steve Nash on their Mind the Game podcast was released Tuesday morning, where Durant and Nash addressed their tenure in Brooklyn. And while most people undoubtedly characterize the attempt at building a super team in Brooklyn as a failed experiment, Durant dismisses the criticism as being the nature of NBA discourse.
“The dialogue around the league, the discourse around the league, they don’t truly appreciate the journey sometimes of what goes on,” Durant said. “Even the ones that don’t work out. You can still see some beauty in the Sacramento Kings that didn’t win the chip. Or your Phoenix Suns that didn’t win the championship. If you really love the game of basketball, you can pull great things from all of that stuff and that’s what I tend to do with that Brooklyn Nets situation.”
“If I’m being honest, we had more good times than not,” Durant claimed. “I look at the season like that a lot. Of course we want to win and go to the chip. But it’s little small moments that I can appreciate throughout a year, even though we don’t add up to winning and a lot of people don’t understand that. But that s*** is in our DNA, in our blood, like we look at the game of ball like that.”
Durant said he was able to learn a lot from his time in Brooklyn and pointed to the fact that younger players on the roster probably learned from that experience as well.
There are times where NBA fans and media might put too much emphasis on winning championships. But you can’t expect anyone to look at Durant, Irving and Harden with the Nets and say, “Yeah, they didn’t win, but Cam Thomas, Nic Claxton and Bruce Brown got some valuable experiences!”
Why have players like LeBron James and Kevin Durant bounced around in their careers if not to win championships? Durant joined the Golden State Warriors to win a championship. He teamed up with Kyrie Irving and James Harden in Brooklyn to win a championship. He joined a Phoenix Suns team that was less than two years removed from a Finals appearance to win a championship. And when teams like the Nets and Suns fall well short of those goals, that’s how they’re going to be remembered.