Wild stat summarizes Kevin Durant's post-Warriors career
Phoenix Suns forward Kevin Durant.
Since leaving Golden State in 2019, Kevin Durant has played for six different head coaches while only registering two postseason series wins.
The wild stat came to light after the Suns dismissed coach Frank Vogel Thursday in light of Durant’s Suns suffering a first-round sweep at the hands of the Timberwolves.
Durant’s six post-Warriors head coaches include Kenny Atkinson, Jacque Vaughn, Steve Nash, Vaughn again, Monty Williams and Vogel.
While Durant doesn’t warrant all the blame for four coaches — Atkinson, Nash, Williams and now Vogel — getting fired under his watch, the NBA has always been a superstar-driven league in which players of his ilk have a lot of say-so in front-office decisions.
That’s precisely why several analysts have blamed Durant for Vogel getting fired just a year after taking the reins from Williams. One of his former OKC teammates, Kendrick Perkins, believes Durant needs to be held accountable for coaches losing their jobs on his watch.
“Frank Vogel got fired after his first season all because the two-time NBA Champion Kevin Durant wasn’t speaking to the man or listening to him for the last three months,” Perkins told “SC with SVP” on ESPN. “All of a sudden that becomes a ripple effect. We have a problem in today’s game with the lack of accountability. Frank Vogel did not deserve to lose his job, but he did because the Suns had to make a choice between Frank Vogel and Kevin Durant.”
As Perkins alluded to, a report last month suggested that Durant “never felt comfortable” within the offensive schemes deployed by Vogel in Phoenix.
According to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, former Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer is earmarked as the favorite to succeed Vogel as the next Suns coach.
Will Budenholzer help Durant reverse his recent playoff woes next season? Incidentally, Durant’s most successful post-Warriors playoff run came against Budenholzer’s Bucks when he was literally an inch away from making the Eastern Conference Finals in 2021.
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