Kevin Durant doesn’t think playing on superteams will hurt his legacy

Forward Kevin Durant’s NBA career appears to be nearing its end, as he’s been in the league dating back to the 2007-08 campaign. Hence, it’s not too early for him to think about his legacy and how he will be remembered after he decides to hang up his jersey.

Durant was asked how he approaches thinking about his legacy, and the four-time scoring champion said he doesn’t think playing on superteams at times in his pro stint will negatively impact his legacy. There’s an argument to be made that he’s been part of several superteams.

“No – not at all,” Durant said. “When you look at — I mean, when I’m done playing man, people are going to respect the amount of years that I put in. And the actual accomplishments — if you reflect on my career and you realize when you look at the big picture, come on. You can’t talk down on anything that a professional athlete who’s been around for two decades — I don’t care how many championships I win or didn’t win. But being around and playing professional sports, it’s a small number of us. To do that for that long — people going to respect that.”

It is undeniable that Durant has an incredibly impressive body of work in the NBA. He’s been a consistently elite offensive player for almost two decades now and has thrived across multiple eras of the game.

Durant has climbed the NBA’s mountaintop too, as he is a two-time champion, though people like to put asterisks next to those titles because of who he played for. He won them while playing for a historically stacked superteam on the Golden State Warriors that also included guards Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson and big man Draymond Green. Durant signed with the Warriors when they were fresh off breaking the record for most wins in a single season with 73, too.

The Warriors superteam is the most notable he’s played for but not the only one. More recently, he formed a superteam next to guards Kyrie Irving and James Harden on the Brooklyn Nets earlier in the decade. However, Durant never came close to winning a title playing alongside those two all-time great offensive players.

But no superteam Durant played for was a bigger train wreck than the Phoenix Suns, who employed guards Bradley Beal and Devin Booker along with the lanky forward. Despite all the talent between those three names, Phoenix didn’t so much as even make the 2025 NBA Playoffs, and Durant was shipped off to the Houston Rockets not long after.