Thoughts on Kevin Durant’s decision to move to the Bay

This archived article was written by: Tai Justice

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you all know that Kevin Durant joined the Golden State Warriors this summer; forming an unstoppable force that if you’re a fan of any other team in the NBA, (that’s me) you should be absolutely terrified about.
We’ve seen super teams before. The obvious one that comes to mind is when LeBron James joined the Miami Heat in 2010. The Lakers tried to form a super team in 2012 when they traded for Steve Nash and signed Dwight Howard. The Clippers have a famous big three in Blake Griffin, Chris Paul and DeAndre Jordon. Point is: teams have done and tried to do this before. All those teams took time to work, every single one of them. Some were never able to work.
I think this Warriors’ team will work almost automatically. This is a team that plays really unselfish basketball. Durant isn’t in any way a selfish player. If he was, he would’ve said something to, or about Russell Westbrook as he watched him shoot away his season, while Durant stood in the corner basically every single year. This is a perfect fit basketball wise. They were impossible to guard last year and now they added, the third-best player in the world.
I don’t really want to talk about the basketball side of this. We all know they’re going to be great and we all know they’re the huge favorites to win the championship this season. I want to talk about why Durant did this because the narratives flying around about him just aren’t true.
The backlash that has come Durant’s way ever since he made his decision has been strong. People are calling him a quitter, that he doesn’t like competition, a front runner and even that he’s easily manipulate. Durant was in Oklahoma City for a decade and watched his owners refuse to spend money to get him and Westbrook any help, they traded away a really good player in James Harden for basically nothing because they didn’t want to pay Harden. If someone doesn’t appreciate your talent enough to help you out, wouldn’t you want to go to a better situation? Every year he’s playing late into May to try and win a championship and every year it came down to the Thunder not being deep enough.
Kevin Durant isn’t a front runner. In his time with the Thunder, he made the finals and made three conference finals. His teams were so close, so many times. Because of bad luck and cheap owners, they were never able to win a championship.
Kevin Durant gave Oklahoma City a decade of amazing play. MVP award, a conference championship, a trip to the finals and he’s not loyal? His owners let him down. Durant is a generational talent and his owners refused to treat him like one.
The competition one doesn’t make sense. First of all, every single player in the NBA is insanely competitive. You don’t get that far if you don’t care about winning. Durant said he just wanted to win. That’s why he signed with Golden State. He didn’t care about anything else other than winning. So when players chase money we say, “Winning should be the top priority!” Then when players put winning as the top priority we say, “They’re front runners!”, or “They hate competition!” Well, which one is it? You can’t have it both ways.
The easily manipulated narrative is a joke. That’s an offensive thing to say about a guy. Have you ever thought he just wanted a change? Maybe a new city and new people in his life? Play for a team that he has friends on?
This summer Durant led our country, ostensible place of freedom, to Gold. But we should slander him for exercising his?