Charles Barkley has been critical of Kevin Durant since he joined the Warriors in 2016, calling the superstar a ring-chaser, and his criticisms of Durant continued before Monday’s game four loss to the Celtics.
“I don’t want to bad mouth the dude…I try to tell y’all, all these bus riders, they don’t mean nothing to me,” Barkley said on TNT’s Inside the NBA. “If you ain’t driving the bus, don’t talk around saying you’re a champion. If you’re riding the bus, I don’t want to hear it.
“All these guys walking around with championship rings, y’all are bus riders. When you’re the bus driver, and you’ve got all that pressure where you have to play well or you’re gonna get the blame, that’s a different animal.”
Durant, who has two titles to his name but was held quiet against Boston’s swarming defense in a first-round sweep on Monday, continued his reputation of never backing down to critics on social media, and clapped back at Barkley in hilarious fashion via his Instagram on Tuesday.
Durant posted two photos of Barkley’s days with the Rockets, where he spent the last four years of his NBA career. His time in Houston included sharing the floor with the legendary Hakeem Olajuwon, Clyde Drexler, and Scottie Pippen, even taking a paycut so the Rockets could get Pippen.
Barkley had once said he wouldn’t have counted a title with Houston, one of the original “superteams” that never panned out, but Durant clearly didn’t forget that era of Barkley’s career, and called out the hypocrisy.
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