After becoming a 2x NBA champion with the Golden State Warriors, Kevin Durant has apparently changed his approach to the NBA and his career. The Brooklyn Nets superstar recently claimed he’s not playing for winning rings but to improve himself and become the best possible player.
Back in 2016, this wasn’t the case for Durant, who was trying and trying (without any success) to win in the Western Conference with the Oklahoma City Thunder. He joined the Warriors that summer and went to three consecutive NBA Finals, helping his team win two championships over that span. Now that he’s with the Nets, forming another superteam, KD thinks differently, saying he’s not focused on winning championships.
Talking with ESPN’s Rachel Nichols, Durantula said that he’s not chasing things elaborated by humans and that he wants to improve his level and be the best version of himself (7:43).
“I wasn’t expecting to be a happy human being from a title,” Durant said. “I was just expecting like, you know, the ending of a movie — once you worked so hard and everybody tells you like, ‘Yo, this is what you need to be working for, is this gold ball and these rings.’ And I’m just like, ‘All right, cool, let me lock in on that.’ And I locked in on wanting to achieve that, but I also realized it’s a lot of stuff that factors in it that’s out of my control.
“And once I won a championship [with Golden State], I realized that, like, my view on this game is really about development. Like, how good can I be? It’s not about, you know, let’s go get this championship. I appreciate that stuff and I want to win to experience that stuff, but it’s not the end-all, be-all of why I play the game.”
Durant is taking a different approach towards the game, focusing on the journey and not the destination. A lot of people believe that once they win or achieve something, things will change for them and they will be endlessly happy, which isn’t the case.
Of course, he will try to win as many titles as he can but that’s not something that keeps KD awake at night. That way, perhaps he could win even more than he’s already won in his remarkable NBA career.
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