Kevin Durant fires back at Charles Barkley on Instagram after being labeled ‘bus rider’ amid Celtics first round sweep of Nets

Kevin Durant fired back at Charles Barkley on Instagram Tuesday after the Inside the NBA host took aim at Durant amid Brooklyn suffering a 4-0 series sweep against the Celtics.

Barkley took aim at Durant in a lead dog role on Sunday night on Inside the NBA, noting that he was a ‘bus rider’ during his championship seasons with the Warriors.

He is (a great player) and let me tell you something, I don’t want to bad mouth the dude but you guys always talk about the championship stuff,” Barkley said. “Let me tell ya’ll, all these bus riders, they don’t mean nothing to me. If you ain’t driving the bus, don’t walk around talking about ‘you a champion.’ If you’re riding the bus, I don’t want to hear it. Come on Shaq, tell’ em. All these guys walk around with these championship rings. Hey, ya’ll bus riders. But let me tell you something. When you’re the bus driver and you got all that pressure when you have to play well or you going to get the blame? That’s a different animal.”

Kenny Smith came to the defense of Durant in the conversation but Barkley pushed back stating that he wasn’t the best player on the Warriors title teams and wasn’t able to lead the Nets or Thunder to a title.

Durant fired back at Barkley via Instagram posts on Tuesday morning after the Nets bowed out in Game 4, posting photos of Barkley playing with Hakeem Olajuwon, Clyde Drexler and Scottie Pippen in Houston at the end of his career as he tried to win a ring. Durant followed that up with phots of Barkley with Hall of Famers Julius Irving and Maurice Cheeks in Philadelphia with the caption ‘Where would Chuck be without the big homies?’

Durant struggled mightily by his standards in the first round against Boston while carrying a heavy burden for a Brooklyn team that was dealing with injuries and plenty of new faces over the past two months. He averaged 26.3 points per game in the series but shot just 38.6 percent from the field while posting a team-high 5.3 turnovers per game, losing the head-to-head battle with Jayson Tatum by a considerable margin. He was gracious in defeat on Monday night after scoring a game-high 36 points in the Game 4 series clincher.

“No regrets. S–t happens. No crying over spilled milk. It’s about how we can progress and get better,” Durant said. “No time to feel regret or be too pissed off about it. Find a solution to get better, proactive as an organization and get better. … We can’t have no regrets on what we did. S–t just played out the way it played.”

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