Here's the thing. When Kevin Durant joined the Golden State Warriors in July 2016 — a team that had just beaten his Oklahoma City Thunder in the Western Conference finals — the internet declared the NBA broken. Pundits wrote eulogies for competitive balance. The discourse lasted years.
Fast-forward to now. LeBron James has chosen the Philadelphia 76ers as his next franchise, and the Sixers have also traded for Jaylen Brown. The result, according to Durant, is a roster with four players who average 25 points. His Warriors team had three 20-point scorers and got called a threat to the sport.
'The last time they put three 20-point scorers on a team, they said it was unfair, which was the [Warriors] team I was on,' Durant said Saturday, per an X post from Ben Golliver of ESPN. 'They've got four 25-point scorers on this team. So, hell yeah, I think they're going to be a contender. They're going to be a great team to watch.'
Durant is not wrong on the arithmetic. His Warriors pairing with Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green produced two NBA championships in Golden State — a franchise that also won a title before he arrived and another after he left. The superteam formula worked. It also generated years of criticism directed almost entirely at Durant personally.
James' move to Philadelphia has not produced the same volume of backlash. Durant's implicit point is obvious: the outrage was never really about competitive balance. It was about who was doing the stacking and whether the narrative fit.
The Sixers' ceiling with this roster is a legitimate question. Only one person can have the ball at a time, and high-usage scorers sharing a halfcourt offense is a real coaching problem. But that is a basketball problem, not a morality play.
Voltage take: The double standard Durant is describing is real, and it is worth naming plainly. Superteams are either fine or they are not. The league, the media, and the fans do not get to decide based on which star is doing the assembling. Durant built something dominant, took the criticism, and won the rings anyway. The 76ers may or may not do the same. But the rules of the discourse should at least be consistent — and right now, per Durant, they are not.
