Kevin Durant Made Smart Decision, Stop Whining About It

by Julian Spivey
Dear NBA Fans and especially NBA writers,
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Calm the hell down.
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Kevin Durant leaving the Oklahoma City Thunder to sign with the Golden State Warriors as a free agent is not a shock nor is it a travesty. In fact, we all should’ve seen it coming.

I feel like both NBA fans and writers (which is particularly dumbfounding to me) need a refresher course on what free agency means. Free agency is when an athlete’s contract ends and they have the right to sign anywhere they want for whatever a certain team will pay them. As long as a team stays within its salary cap there are no limitations on things like number of all-star players a single team can have. It’s a decision between the players and the teams and the rest of us sit back and watch and wait and if we’re a fan of a particular team we hope “our” team lands the best player it can.  

Kevin Durant’s decision was his and his alone and yet everybody seems to have their two cents on it and the majority of that change is going into the coin jar titled “Kevin Durant is a Joke.”

Excuse me … a joke?

Kevin Durant signed with a better team and now that he’s on the Warriors it’s a much better team than the Thunder would’ve been for the same amount of money as he would’ve made if he’d re-upped with OKC. And the Bay Area in California is generally considered to be a better area for a superstar to live than the Midwest, blue collar town of Oklahoma City (no offense meant).

It seems dumbfounding to me how a guy taking the best possible deal on the best possible team can be considered a joke, but nowadays if you can’t lead the team that drafted you to a NBA title people seem to believe that’s exactly what you are. That’s a standard that seems way too tough. NBA fans and especially writers are worried too much these days about “legacy.” And, in their minds if you don’t lead your first team to a title and have to essentially form an all-star team in one city to do so that it harms your legacy. I call B.S. The whole point of basketball, as in any sport, is winning championships and Durant has put himself in a much better spot to win championships in the Bay Area than he would’ve in OKC.

I don’t blame Durant for wanting to get out of OKC as quickly as possible and this is why his decision to do so and head out West is not surprising in the least to me. Durant gave OKC the very best he had for almost a full decade and they didn’t quite return the favor. The Thunder have spent the majority of the last decade being the bridesmaids of the NBA. They could get to the brink of full marital bliss and then fall just short time and time again. This was partially due to general manger Sam Presti building a team that just wasn’t good enough and also the fact that the team had too many cooks in the kitchen with Durant and Russell Westbrook both fighting to be alpha when everyone knows this can’t exist on an NBA team – somebody has to take second fiddle and Westbrook wasn’t willing and Durant didn’t care enough to assert his dominance. And, guess what? He doesn’t have to in Golden State. He can go in there and make his shots and not worry about being “the guy.” Is that cowardly as many writers and fans are claiming? I just think it’s smart.

By the way, Westbrook is a free agent after next season and has already said he has no intention in signing an extension and is likely to bolt even quicker than Durant did. OKC fans might as well already throw his jersey on top of their idiotic Durant jersey bonfire and just keep that thing burning through next summer. For this very reason the Thunder should go ahead and trade Westbrook now while they can get a boatload for him so they don’t get absolutely nothing for both Durant and Westbrook. This team is going to quickly go from bridesmaid to sitting somewhere behind a cylinder at the reception.

Fans are emotional. That’s why fan is a shortened version of fanatic. I don’t take the emotions and biases of fans seriously. Many of them were already starting to dislike the Warriors based on their regular season dominance this past season and Durant’s signing clinches the title of NBA’s villain for that team. I think that feeling will only make them want to win more. The fans know that this signing will likely make the entirety of the regular season and even a bulk of the playoffs boring and are upset by that. That’s fine. You could argue that Durant’s signing with the Warriors is bad for the NBA, but that doesn’t make his decision a bad one.

It’s the writers whining and going on-and-on about Durant’s move to the Bay Area that really irritates me. Writers and sports commentators from networks like ESPN and publications likes Sports Illustrated calling Durant’s move weak as if they’ve never left previous jobs for the better ones they have right now. Doesn’t ESPN’s resident buffoon Stephen A. Smith realize he left the Philadelphia Inquirer for his better, cushy gig at ESPN because it was a better deal and that claiming Durant is “weak” for doing a similar thing makes him a hypocrite? Shouldn’t he have stayed with the Inquirer until he helped lead it to a Pulitzer?

Durant made the best possible decision he could have and is getting universally lambasted for it. How idiotic have we gotten as sports fans and even writers when this is the case? When Durant is polishing his championship ring in a year or two he probably won’t care.

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