Kevin Durant and Charles Barkley don’t seem to like one another all that much. On multiple occasions, the two have gone back-and-forth over critiques Barkley has levied towards Durant on Inside the NBA — Barkley has said that Durant is classified as one of the league’s “bus riders” for how he got his two rings, which unsurprisingly did not sit particularly well with Durant.
Now that Durant’s offseason trade saga with the Brooklyn Nets has come to an end, he’ll have the opportunity to shut Barkley up (to whatever extent such a thing is possible) and lead a team to a championship. Still, it’s not like Barkley is suddenly going to change his tune on Durant, and during a radio appearance in Arizona this week, he decided to go at Durant once again.
“Well, I think it depends on if he wins again,” Barkley said when asked what he thinks Durant’s legacy will be when his career ends. “All the old guys, he gets mad when we say it, he piggybacked on the Warriors to win his first two championships, but if you go back and look at his career, as the best payer and being a leader, that all goes with that, he’s been an abject failure.
“Every time he’s been, like, the guy who has to be the leader and the best player, he has not had success, and that’s what us old guys think about him — until he becomes a leader and best player on a championship team, where he has to deal with all responsibility, all the media stuff that goes with it, expectations,” Barkley continued. “So, we’re always gonna hold that against him. But man, he just seems like a miserable person, man. I call him Mr. Miserable, he’s never gonna be happy.”
Barkley went on to say that “everybody’s given him everything on a silver platter,” citing how beloved he was in Oklahoma City, how he got his rings with Golden State, and became the face of the franchise in Brooklyn.