The Warriors posted the best playoff performance in NBA history, have four All-Stars, three combined MVP awards, and the deepest roster in the league. Not good enough for KD.
After joining a team that set the record for most wins ever in an NBA season, featured three All-Stars, and a two-time Most Valuable Player, Kevin Durant said he does not feel the Golden State Warriors are a “superteam.”
“Superteam? No,” Durant said, according to ESPN.com’s Chris Haynes. “We just work extremely well together. Coach puts us in position to maximize our strengths.”
Durant said he doesn’t consider the Warriors a superteam because their team was assembled through draft picks outside the top five. Golden State selected Curry No. 7 overall in 2009. The Warriors grabbed Thompson No. 11 in 2011, and Green went 35th in 2012.
He even cited the Warriors role players as castaways. The Sixers traded Andre Iguodala before he won Finals MVP with Golden State in 2015. Shaun Livingston played for nine different teams before arriving and sticking with the Warriors. JaVale McGee’s history has been well-documented.
To Durant, the Warriors are merely a product of selflessness, an attribute he sought after when he made the decision to leave Oklahoma City for Oakland last summer.
"We make each other better and it's not about who gets the credit," he said via ESPN. “A lot of these guys beat the odds and came out and played a great brand of basketball and put the team first. That should be rewarded, and it did get rewarded with a championship."
But what’s the issue with calling yourselves a superteam?
The Warriors won 73 games last year and made it to the NBA Finals before blowing a 3-1 series lead to the Cavaliers. Then they replaced Harrison Barnes with Durant, a four-time league scoring champion and former MVP. That supercharged a cast that features two of the most dangerous three-point shooters in NBA history (Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson), one of the most versatile two-way players in the NBA (Draymond Green), a deep reserve of former All-Stars (Andre Iguodala and David West), and serviceable veterans (Shaun Livingston, JaVale McGee, Matt Barnes).
The result was a team that swept through the Western Conference playoffs before only conceding one game to a Cavaliers team that boasted three All-Stars itself, one of whom is LeBron James, widely regarded as the best active basketball player on the planet.
Durant may have a point: He’s the only top-three draft pick on the Warriors’ roster. But players fall through the cracks of the NBA draft every year, and draft order shouldn’t have any bearing on whether a squad is deemed a superteam.
Talent is the equalizer, and the Warriors have a ton of it — far and away more than any other team in the NBA. Regardless of where they were drafted, the Warriors have better players than the rest of the league. Adding Durant was the icing on the cake.
James took this stance recently, as well. After losing to the Warriors in Game 5, The King said he’s never played for a superteam in his career — not now, next to Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love, and not years ago next to Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh.
"I don't believe I've played for a superteam. I don't believe in that," James said. "I don't believe we're a superteam here (in Cleveland)."
In fact, the only player to insinuate his group was, in fact, a superteam was Derrick Rose, who said the New York Knicks were categorized alongside the Warriors as a top team entering the season. “I mean, with these teams right now, they’re saying us and Golden State are the super teams,” Rose said last July before the Knicks finished the season 31-51.
So maybe there’s some bad luck that comes with actually owning the term.
If the Warriors have the gall to be this damn good, they can’t run away from the one term we have to effectively describe them. They have three MVP trophies split between two players, a perennial All-NBA defender, the best two-way shooting guard in the NBA, and the deepest bench in the league.
You’re a superteam, KD, whether you like it or not. And that’s not bad thing. It just is what it is.
