PHOENIX — Former Phoenix Suns forward Kevin Durant continues to find his name in headlines during the 2025 offseason. <\/p>\n
Traded from Phoenix to the Houston Rockets over the summer, Durant and the Suns both hope new beginnings will revitalize their respective paths moving forward. <\/p>\n
Durant’s one of the more polarizing players in the league, and criticisms of his leadership and ability to elevate teammates around him continues even after leaving the Suns. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Mar 26, 2025; Phoenix, Arizona, USA; Phoenix Suns forward Kevin Durant (35) looks on against the Boston Celtics during the second half at Footprint Center. Mandatory Credit: Rick Scuteri-Imagn Images \/ Rick Scuteri-Imagn Images<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know how I feel about Kevin Durant, I think he\u2019s one of the best players ever, but I don\u2019t think he has the ability to take a questionable team and elevate them dudes to a certain level,” said Jeff Teague on the Club 520 Podcast. <\/p>\n
For context, Teague was comparing LeBron James’ ability to elevate teammates compared to Durant. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve gotta be generational. That\u2019s what made Chris Paul special; that\u2019s what made LeBron very special. It\u2019s a rare few people that can just do that. Even Mike [Michael Jordan] couldn\u2019t do that. ‘I\u2019ll win the game by myself’ but he really didn\u2019t make people better. He challenged some other people to get better \u2014 he challenged Scottie like, \u2018You gotta be stronger, you gotta be this.\u2019 He led by example.\u201d<\/p>\n
Full video below:<\/p>\n
This has been a consistent criticism of Durant since he departed Oklahoma City, playing on fairly loaded teams in the Golden State Warriors, Brooklyn Nets and Phoenix before now landing in Houston – who could very well challenge the Oklahoma City Thunder for the crown out West this coming season. <\/p>\n
Many in Phoenix might agree with Teague’s viewpoint, as the Suns didn’t win a single playoff game in the Durant-Bradley Beal-Devin Booker era. <\/p>\n
Durant, highly regarded as one of the greatest scorers in NBA history, has stated publicly numerous times his lack of care for opinions on his leadership. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHOENIX — Former Phoenix Suns forward Kevin Durant continues to find his name in headlines during the 2025…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":148948,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5131],"tags":[5229,5643,1587,1589,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-148947","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-phoenix","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-arizona","10":"tag-az","11":"tag-phoenix","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-united-states-of-america","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115035168004064939","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}