After Charles Barkley described Kevin Durant as a “bus rider” rather than a “bus driver,” the Brooklyn Nets forward has seemingly responded on Instagram.
“I don’t want to badmouth the dude [Durant], but you guys are always talking about that championship stuff,” Barkley said on Sunday. “I tried to tell y’all, all these bus riders, they don’t mean nothing to me. If you ain’t driving the bus, don’t walk around telling me you a champion. All these guys walking around with these championship rings, hey, y’all bus riders. When you’re the bus driver and you’ve got all that pressure when you have to play well or you’re going to get the blame, that’s a different animal.”
On Tuesday, Durant responded in a series of posts featuring Barkley with his all-star teammates on both the Rockets and the Sixers. “Where would Chuck be without the big homies,” Durant wrote, seemingly suggesting that he thinks Barkley’s “bus rider” criticism could easily apply to him, too, especially when he joined Scottie Pippen, Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler on the Rockets near the end of his career.
Durant’s posts come after Barkley made sure to clarify his comments on Monday.
“Kevin Durant is a great, great player. When I talked about bus riders last night, I think people are trying to say I was saying he was a freeloader on the bus,” he explained. “But the point I was making was, when you are the guy on the a team, your responsibilities change. You’re not allowed to have bad games. That’s just the responsibility that goes with being a great player. And like I said, he’s got his own bus now, which is the point I was trying to make. I ain’t never gonna bad mouth Kevin, I think he’s a great player and a great kid… Now he’s the leader. He’s the clear-cut bus driver.”
Durant also responded to Rob Perez tweeting that Inside the NBA would “destroy him.”
The Nets’ season came to a jarring end on Monday when team was swept at home by the Boston Celtics.
