Along with LeBron James and Steph Curry, Kevin Durant has been one of the three best players in the NBA over the past decade or so.
His resume is impressive — four scoring titles, two world championships, two NBA Finals MVPs and one regular-season MVP, and at age 35, he isn’t exactly close to being done.
However, many people refuse to give him any real credit for his two rings, as they claim he merely rode Curry’s coattails.
Hall of Fame center Shaquille O’Neal said that if Durant is to get the credit he deserves and enter the GOAT conversation, he needs to win a ring as the “bus driver,” via NBACentral on Twitter.
“You lose to Golden State and then you go join them, I think that tarnishes it,” O’Neal said of Durant’s historical standing. “Now, if he can win one where he’s the ‘bus driver,’ like Charles [Barkley] always say, I think we would definitely have to put him in that conversation.”
Shaq says KD will join the GOAT discussion if he wins a title as the bus driver
(🎥 @bigpodwithshaq / https://t.co/EABjBSbphD) pic.twitter.com/bNDLsblI81
— NBACentral (@TheDunkCentral) January 31, 2024
“Bus driver” is a term Charles Barkley, O’Neal’s colleague on TNT, came up with the describe a superstar who is the biggest driving force on a team.
However, the term is vague, as it is possible for a team to have several players with that designation.
For instance, one has to conclude that when he won three straight titles with the Los Angeles Lakers, O’Neal took turns driving the bus with Kobe Bryant.
Durant and Curry took turns driving the Golden State bus from 2016 to 2019, and a very strong argument could be made that Golden State needed Durant to win both of those titles.
After a failed superteam experiment with the Brooklyn Nets, Durant was traded last year to the Phoenix Suns, and despite sharing the court with Devin Booker and Bradley Beal, he is the Suns’ unquestioned “bus driver.”
The Suns are currently 27-20 after a rough start, and it is starting to look like they’ll at least have something to say about who comes out of the Western Conference this June.
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