Kevin Durant Makes Outrageous Claim Involving 2017 Warriors

The 2016-17 Warriors might be the greatest team of all time, but Kevin Durant believes the 2026-27 76ers are as good on paper.

Durant implied that's what he thought during a USA Basketball event on Sunday, and he doubled down on Monday when replying to a fan on Instagram who said the two teams "ain't close."

"Ain’t close lmao," Durant replied. "Joel, mvp recently. Jaylen brown, recent finals mvp, Tyrese Maxey, all star the last 3 years. We all know what bron does. Klay Thompson, never a mvp candidate in nothing, 22ppg. Draymond, 14ppg 7 rebounds 6 assist, Steph a mvp just like Joel was. I don’t get how the warriors team is better on paper."

Adding Some Context on KD's Take

In the season prior to Durant's arrival with the Warriors, Curry was the unanimous MVP. Meanwhile, Joel Embiid hasn't played 40-plus games in a season since winning MVP in 2023.

Durant was coming off finishing fifth in the MVP race, and he was just 27 years old in 2016. LeBron James is 41 and coming off a season in which he averaged a career-low-tying 20.9 points per game.

Klay Thompson was coming off making his second consecutive All-NBA third team. Tyrese Maxey just made his first All-NBA third team last season.

Draymond Green was coming off finishing seventh in MVP voting, while Jaylen Brown finished sixth in 2025-26.

In summary, the Curry-Durant tandem was better than the Embiid-James tandem will be, while Thompson and Green might be better third- and fourth-best players than Maxey and Brown due in large part to their defensive exploits.

With this context, the only logical conclusion is that the Warriors had a better Big Four than the 76ers do, and we haven't even gotten into the fact that Andre Iguodala is a better fifth-best player than VJ Edgecombe.

That Warriors team won 67 regular-season games before posting the best playoff win percentage in NBA history by going 16-1. It was the heavy favorite all year after having won 73 regular-season games the season before without Durant.

This 76ers team is a pretty damn good on paper, but it would be a minor surprise if it won a title.

Subtle Digs?

One could argue Durant's entire Instagram post could be taken as subtle digs to Curry, Thompson and Green.

Sure, Curry and Embiid are both MVP winners. But Curry is the player who Durant co-starred with to get two titles, and overall Curry has four titles and two MVPs to Embiid's one MVP. It would be like Magic Johnson saying Bill Walton and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar are the same because they both won an MVP. Not only is it misleading, but Johnson wouldn't say something like this anyway because he respects Abdul-Jabbar too much to make such a strange comparison.

As for Thompson and Green, it's fair to argue that Maxey and Brown are better players. But what made Thompson and Green so valuable was how their skills complemented dominant offensive players.

Thompson's on-ball defense and three-point shooting were just what Curry needed from the 2-guard spot, and Green was the key to the Warriors' excellent defense as well as a solid offensive playmaker.

I'm sure Durant would say his post wasn't meant to be an all-encompassing argument about the Warriors and 76ers players and therefore any criticism is misplaced.

But I think it's fair to say this whole thing is strange.

I can't think of any recent example in which a player from a championship team tried to argue another team was as good.

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