I still don’t know how to feel about Kevin Durant
*This was written in the Summer of 2019, shortly after Kevin Durant announced he would join the Brooklyn Nets
“I’ve been second my whole life. I was the second-best player in high school. I was the second pick in the draft. I’ve been second in the MVP voting three times. I came in second in the Finals. I’m tired of being second. I’m not going to settle for that. I’m done with it.”
When Kevin Durant said this to Sports Illustrated in 2013, the basketball universe cheered. This was in the midst of LeBron James’ flirt with the “dark side” in Miami, and we were all enamored with the idea of LeBron James’ failure. That’s actually why I watched my first NBA game: to watch LeBron James play in the hopes that he would lose. We rooted for his dethronement; for a challenger to emerge and commit basketball regicide. We rooted for the idea of a small-market savior who would emerge from Bethlehem and slay the almighty monsters in Jerusalem. And no player better embodied that idea than Kevin Durant. We didn’t want Kevin Durant to come in second because we didn’t want to see LeBron come in first. And now, 6 years later, Durant has left the Golden State Warriors after a three year run that saw him take home two championships and two Finals MVP awards. For the last three years, he has been the best player on arguably the single greatest basketball team that the NBA has ever produced.
How will we remember the years when Kevin Durant came in first?
For most - not fondly. Because on July 4th, 2016, Kevin Durant left the Oklahoma City Thunder in free agency to join the Golden State Warriors. Devoid of context, that sentence is so innocuous and mundane that it seems impossible to have inspired the amount of negativity that it did.
Plenty of players- even all-time greats- have left the teams that drafted them in order to validate their careers with a ring or to escape a shitty situation.
Except he didn’t leave a mediocre franchise to go join a promising up-and-coming squad. He left a championship contender, one that held a 3-1 lead over the Warriors to join the Warriors. They were/are an icon in sports. They went 73-9, had the greatest shooter of all time (who had just won back-to-back MVPS) ((along with being the only MVP to win the award unanimously)), a human straightjacket of a defender (who would go on to win Defensive Player of the Year), and the best 3&D guard in the league (who would go on to inspire a religious following).
They were already the best team in the league, maybe the best team in history, and they were still able to be beaten! That was one of my favorite things about the Warriors! The Cavs pulled-off the greatest comeback in basketball history right when we thought that the Warriors were laying the foundation of an inevitable dynasty and proved to the world that the Warriors weren’t invincible. The spirit of Kevin Garnett possessed the league, screaming inside all of us that “ANYTHING IS POSSIBUUUUUUUUULLL”! And then… *poof*... a month later it was gone.
By my tally, when Kevin Durant joined the Warriors, we lost
Durant as a sympathetic, venerated, admired, breathtaking player who was almost unanimously supported and liked by fans
Steph as the leading man and maestro of the most entertaining offense I can remember in the NBA
A historically meaningful Cavs-Warriors rubber match that wasn’t ridiculously tilted in the Warriors’ favor
The Warriors as a likable and organic media darling that revolutionized basketball
The Thunder as the model and representative for small-markets teams who wanted to compete against heavyweights without compromising starpower
The possibility that the Thunder could escape their fate in the “Teams that Should’ve, Would’ve, and Could’ve Won a Title” Club
Competitive Balance throughout the NBA as a whole
Yeah, I’m part of that crowd. And you can give me the “wEll ActUally, tHe nBa hAs NeVer hAD mUcH PaRiTY oR cOmPEtiTiVe bAlaNCe!” bullshit.
Whatever.
It still sucked to know almost definitively who was going to win the championship, barring injury. Those other dynasties that “wrecked competitive balance” were at least compelling, right? Bird and Magic might’ve streaked through the 80’s and hogged all the rings, but their rivalry was compelling. Jordan did the same thing in the 90’s, but his ascension to the throne was full of twists like his retirement, turns like signing Dennis Rodman, and expectations that were impossible to meet but were exceeded.. It was compelling. The Durant Warriors might’ve had their fair share of gossip and drama, but it wasn’t anything that could create a storyline or narrative compelling enough to offset the looming inevitability of a Warrior’s championship.
There are some who would defend Durant and other super dominant teams like Alabama Football and UCONN Women’s Basketball by claiming that displeasure in watching a team double their opponent’s score just proves that “you don’t ACTUALLY love the sport”. “I just love to watch good football/basketball” they say. “My sports dick is so much bigger than yours because there’s nothing I love watching more than watching a 31-point blowout”.
Maybe they’re right. Maybe they’re the Dirk Diggler of sports penises and maybe I’m the guy in the locker room who goes into the stall just to change my shorts. But who would rather watch a 4-game sweep than a 7-game thriller? Who would rather watch a blowout than a buzzer beater? Yes, there’s something incredibly impressive about a team who exists on a level all their own (like the 73-win team), but the Durant Warrior’s felt so inorganic and unfair that it didn’t seem impressive at all to me and lead to moments of complete disinterest of the sport.
Am I wrong, though? Yeah, I didn’t enjoy Durant on the Warriors, but three straight NBA Finals in the Western Conference is still impressive. Winning back-to-back titles is historically significant. Durant’s play with the Warriors was every bit as breathtaking as it was when he was with the Thunder. The Warriors will be remembered as the team of the 2010’s, just like the Lakers of the 2000’s and the Bulls of the 90’s because Durant put them in a stratosphere whose air only five or six teams have ever breathed. That’s important, and it doesn’t make it any less historic or important just because I didn’t like it.
I don’t need to go into his stats or his career accolades to tell you how good Durant is. He’s the most versatile scorer to ever play basketball; one of the true unicorns in NBA history. He’s a generational talent, an MVP and a champion twice over. By just about any metric, he’s one of the 20 best basketball players of all time.
And I think the thing that upset me the most was the fact that when he went to Golden State, it felt like he put a cap on what his apex could be. He could play the best basketball of his life, but what would it really mean? Being on the Warriors allowed him to play his best basketball and to win games, but it was like turning up the sliders on Madden. “Oh? You threw for 700 yards and 12 touchdowns? Cool.” Everything he did (and he did some incredible things) felt tainted in a way.
For those three years, I was just trying to hold my breath and get through it. I wanted to get out on the other side so Durant could really go to a new team and really go try to reach his apex. And the idea of Durant going to the Knicks? One of the all-time greats going to a franchise whose historic and cultural significance is only matched by its ineptitude in an attempt to return said franchise to its rightful place and former glory? That’s a Lord of the Rings-ass apex right there. And it seemed like we were really going to see him at least try to achieve it. I think that’s why I felt okay about not liking him. I always thought he was going to move on and fulfill one of the grandest NBA destinies ever and we would all look back on his days with the Warriors as more of a detour than a destination.
And then he got hurt.
Now he and Kyrie Irving are Brooklyn Nets. There’s a chance that his apex is still coming: delivering the Nets their first NBA title would be a hell of a feat, never mind the fact that it would come after an injury as serious as a ruptured Achilles. It’s entirely possible. The Nets have been surging back to relevance and competence in recent years, and Durant and Irving deciding to go there exemplifies that. A championship there might be a little less poetic, but it would still be celebrated by the city of New York and by a franchise that has had valleys just as deep as the Knicks.
But there’s also a chance that his apex has already happened.
There’s a chance that the Durant that received as much criticism as any player that I can remember after the “weakest move ever” and the one that people called a snake and a cupcake was the best version of Durant. The one who was hitting game-winning shots and winning MVPs in The Finals against LeBron James.
There’s a chance that the apex of one of the best basketball players to ever play the game, who played on one of the most dominant basketball teams of all time, came and went while we all whined and bitched about how we didn’t like it and how it wasn’t fair.
That possibility makes it a question more complicated than I think I was ever ready to ask, much less answer:
How will we remember the years when Kevin Durant came in first?