On the latest Dubs Talk podcast, NBC Sports Northwest’s Channing Frye said that when the Warriors signed Kevin Durant in 2016 after losing to the Cavs “it diminished everything that was accomplished before him.”
Armed with Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green and Andre Iguodala, the 2016-through-2019 Warriors were a collection of talent the likes of which the NBA had never seen before and might never see again.
When the Warriors signed Durant in the summer of 2016, it allowed them to add one of the greatest scorers in NBA history to a team that already was next to impossible to stop. Durant won two championships and two NBA Finals MVPs in his three years with Golden State before heading to Brooklyn last summer.
Durant's decision to join the Warriors turned the NBA on its head, creating a behemoth that only injuries could stop. But former Cleveland Cavaliers forward Channing Frye, now an NBC Sports Northwest analyst, believes the Warriors signing Durant "diminished" everything they did before him.
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"The Warriors getting Kevin Durant, yes you won championships, which I guess is all that matters, I think at the end, and I'm just saying this as someone from the outside, it almost looks like it diminishes everything that was accomplished before him," Frye told NBC Sports Bay Area's Grant Liffmann on the "Dubs Talk" podcast. "It takes the allure of the Warriors away.
"And until the Warriors go back without him, it's like, 'You had to have a stacked team with five Hall of Famers to win.' And I think that puts a lot of unnecessary pressure on Steph, right? Which is not fair because he's been an MVP candidate every single year, but he's played with, what we now know to be two or three Hall of Famers."
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Whether or not Durant actually diminished the Warriors' legacy is up to the individual, and it no doubt will be debated until our bones have turned to dust.
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One thing is clear, however: The Steph-KD Warriors were a rare spectacle. An NBA solar flare that could burn white-hot and ether an opponent in minutes before heading back into cruise control.
Debate the merits of the Warriors' legacy if you must. The rest of us will look back in awe at a level of greatness the NBA might never witness again.