Kevin Durant reveals blunt ‘underdog’ view of Warriors before joining

Nearly 10 years have passed since Kevin Durant made the league-altering decision to join the Golden State Warriors in free agency. It was an unprecedented cap spike that enabled the Warriors to add Durant to their championship core, and they proceeded to steamroll the association in 2017 and 2018 all while taking away the best player of the team that stood out as their biggest rival, the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Durant’s decision remains one of the most pivotal turning points in the history of the NBA. Those Warriors championships with Durant on the roster felt inevitable, leaving the league without much sense of parity, and they might have won three titles in a row had it not been for Durant’s Achilles injury in 2019.

To this day, Durant is needing to justify his choice to team up with the Warriors, the team that climbed back from a 3-1 deficit to eliminate his Thunder in the 2016 Western Conference Finals. And Durant’s latest explanation points to the Dubs franchise’s status as an “underdog” over the years.

“They never been a winning organization. When I was in the league, nobody liked Golden State. It felt like still an underdog to me. I’m looking at the totality of the franchise, not what happened the last five years. You never been a perennial winner in the NBA from the 50s on up, I’m like, ‘Damn, this an underdog franchise. This feel good. Like s**t, this feel like where I’m supposed to be. It ain’t LA, it ain’t New York,” Durant said in an appearance on Barstool Sports.

“They never been a winning organization… Nobody liked Golden State… It felt like still an underdog to me… I'm looking at the totality of the franchise… Not what happened the last 5 years."

Kevin Durant on signing with the Warriors in 2016 pic.twitter.com/qMA4x3EVMK

— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPoints) June 22, 2026

Perhaps there is some truth to what Durant is saying. He hasn’t been the type to join a historically successful franchise; he signed with the Brooklyn Nets, the little brother in New York, forced a trade to the Phoenix Suns, an NBA franchise without a title, and now, he’s with the Houston Rockets — a team that won the NBA title as the sixth seed, becoming the very definition of an underdog.

Nonetheless, Durant made the Warriors unstoppable for a time, and he must have known how he would tilt the balance of the league in Golden State’s favor when he signed there.

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