Kevin Durant will be one of the best NBA players of all time. Now entering his 19th NBA season, he has proven that he may very well be the most talented scorer the league has ever seen.
However, his three years with the Golden State Warriors have been, still are, and likely forever will be scrutinized because of the narrative that he rode their coattails to get the two titles he has under his belt. Chief among the critics has been Charles Barkley. Durant obviously takes issue with this narrative and wants to make it clear how false that notion is.
How Did Kevin Durant Respond to Charles Barkley?
Durant is among the five NBA players featured in the new Netflix series “Starting 5.” The show features a montage of analysts and former players like Barkley accusing Durant of taking the easy way out by joining Golden State and calling him a “bus rider.”
Durant responded to this in the series and clarified that his time with the Warriors was far from how his skeptics, like Barkley, described it in a clip from the series aggregated by the X account Stunna.
“I done rode the bus,” Durant said. “I done filled the gas tank up, I was the gas, I was the wheels, the axle, the brakes, all different given parts. I was behind the bus pushing that (expletive). I was in the back of that bus. I done did I played every role for that team.”
Durant then responded to Barkley directly when the latter asserted that Durant lost in the finals when he was “driving the bus.”
Kevin Durant responds to the Charles Barkley “Bus Driver” comments
“I done rode the bus, I done filled the gas tank up, I was the gas , I was the wheels , I was the axle, I was the breaks , all different given parts , I played every role for that team”
— 𝘚𝘵𝘶𝘯𝘯𝘢☆ (@Stunna999_) October 16, 2025
“Yeah, we could talk in these metaphors all we want. I got a lot of them. He never knew what it was like to remove your ego so you can go out there and help a city, a town win a championship,” Durant said. Then he went on to give a hypothesis of Barkley’s career.
KD said, “It was all about him, his whole life, his whole career. His whole life is all about how he feels, how he wanna talk, how he can say anything to anybody ’cause, ‘I’m Charles Barkley. I can say whatever.'”
That Warriors team was downright invincible in the three years Durant was there. If anything, his unfortunate Achilles tear in 2019 may have been the only obstacle that stopped them from pulling off the three-peat.
It doesn’t stop the fact that he joined a team that won 73 games without him and came within inches of winning a title the year before he joined the team. That doesn’t make him wrong, though. Durant truly adapted to the Warriors’ schemes, bringing them to a level that made them head and shoulders above everyone else in the NBA during that time.
Read More: ‘Don’t Send Me to the Warriors’ – Kevin Durant Desperately Avoided Former Team During Trade Saga
What makes him look worse, though, is that not only has he not returned to the NBA Finals since leaving them in 2019, but he hasn’t even made it past the second round over the last six years. That could change with the Houston Rockets this season, but that’s thinking several months down the line.
However, Durant isn’t wrong about Barkley, and better yet, he made sure his career won’t end like Barkley’s did: Without a title. Love it or hate it, Durant is an NBA champion while Barkley never was.
The irony is that Durant responds directly to Barkley, who went from the Phoenix Suns to the Rockets as his NBA career dwindled in the 90s. Almost 30 years later, Durant has gone down a similar path.
