Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry are happily sharing the spotlight, and as long as they’re winning championships together, KD says individual awards “don’t mean anything.”
Durant and Curry have swapped MVP contention for the Golden State Warriors’ annual marches to the NBA Finals.
Kevin Durant & Stephen Curry traded in MVP contention for annual title contention. "If we were chasing MVP trophies & not the ultimate goal, that’s where it might be a little contentious & create some unnecessary drama. But that’s not what we’re about.” https://t.co/Q8qwDW3APP
— Michael Lee (@MrMichaelLee) March 7, 2018
Durant knows fans in opposing gyms fear him regardless of where he finishes in the MVP race.
Per Yahoo! Sports:
The upside for Durant and Curry is that they will enter every season together for the near future in contention for a championship. The downside — which neither appears to be sweating — is that they will also cancel out each other when it comes to consideration for the league’s MVP award. “If that’s how it plays out, I think that’s an unfortunate circumstance,” Curry told Yahoo Sports. “I think we’ll be plenty fine, winning games, winning championships. Really trying to figure out who is responsible for what, we don’t have time for that conversation. If that’s why we were playing, if we were chasing MVP trophies and not the ultimate goal, that’s where it might be a little contentious and create some unnecessary drama. But that’s not what we’re about.”
Despite finishing with the league’s best record for the third consecutive season, Curry followed a unanimous MVP vote by finishing sixth, while Durant came in ninth, his worst finish to a season in which he played at least half the games since 2009. This season, the Warriors remain title favorites even though their regular season has been relatively uneven. And one, or both, could again find himself outside of the top five in the MVP vote.
“Awards don’t mean anything, for one. You can still be an MVP-caliber player and not win MVP, in my opinion,” Durant told Yahoo Sports. “I know how good I am. Everybody in this league knows how good I am. All the fans know. No matter how much they try to deny it, or hate, or tell you anything different. They know when I step on the court, they fear me, as fans of the game. I’m not saying my opponents fear me, but when I get a wide-open shot, I hear the crowd. Before I shoot it, I hear. They all respect it. But obviously, the move that I made, people that — they enjoy competition, whatever they call that, or suspense in the basketball game — they didn’t like it. So anything to take a shot at me here and there, I knew it was coming. The MVP I got, I experienced that already. That’s what I’m about, I want to experience things. I experienced what that’s like. Let’s move on. What’s next for me?”
