What would your reaction be if an NBA MVP and scoring champion elected to join your team via free agency? As any Warriors’ fan, my first reaction was pure ecstasy on July 4 when I received my barrage of texts about the signing. The oft-cited Bill Simmons expose dissects thoroughly how Warriors fans have been tumultuously thrown around over the course of recent decades. We've all been witness to that roller coaster veering sharply upward in recent years. Now that team represents the league’s Goliath. The 2016-17 Golden State Warriors will be one of the league’s most intimidating super-teams. Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry, Draymond Green, Klay Thompson…it is undoubtedly a powerhouse team unlike any in NBA history.
It feels ironic that the team from Silicon Valley rose
just as meteorically as its tech industry. Apple, Google, Facebook, and
Snapchat…and now the local Warriors. The David Lee pick-up set the stage for
the Andre Iguodala acquisition which eventually led to this??!!
After reading 100s (probably thousands) of tweets, watching
too many rants by “experts,” and reading all the hate on reddit and my own
Facebook feed, some guilt started to creep in. We earned our championship and
our regular season record through the draft, and small but smart moves started
to naturally add up. Is Kevin Durant crossing the line of too much? How did Golden State end up ripping the thunder out of
Oklahoma City? And where does loyalty fit into the greater picture of the NBA?
Assessing "The Decision"
Three questions here that are repeated again and again:
should the Warriors feel guilty for hoarding a disproportionate amount of the
league’s elite talent? Do we blame the Thunder ownership for failing to make
re-signing Durant’s best option? Do we blame Durant himself for a) leaving OKC
and/or b) joining the team that beat him in the Western Conference Finals? I
think this all fits into a more complex picture that casual NBA fans prefer
to neglect for the simplified one. As Daniel Kahneman wrote in Thinking Fast and Slow, we often elect to substitute
our answer to an important target question (how should the movement of elite
NBA talent be regulated by the league?) with the heuristic question (should
Durant have left OKC to join the Warriors?). And the result of this
substitution, as I will discuss later, is a tremendous amount of hypocrisy. Resentment from other teams and fan bases would be quite different if
they were a part of the Warriors fans or organization. As Jim
Rome said, “[the Warriors are] playing the same game as everyone else. They’re just
playing it a helluva lot better.”
The Warriors should be praised rather than vilified for
acquiring Durant. Golden State drafted the vast majority of its core. Stephen
Curry (drafted 2009), Klay Thompson (2011), Draymond Green (2012), Harrison
Barnes (2012), Festus Ezeli (2012) were all homegrown products. Not unlike
Oklahoma City, who drafted three MVP candidates (Kevin Durant, Russell
Westbrook, James Harden) in three consecutive years, 2007-2009, both teams
relied on strong drafts to make themselves competitive. Isn’t this exactly what
teams like the Boston Celtics do? Stack assets, become competitive, and hope to
acquire a superstar?
The glaring difference between the two teams (GSW and OKC) was their respective desires to retain talent. OKC couldn’t make up a $4
million difference to keep James Harden. They instead opted to take Kevin Martin,
Jeremy Lamb, and three draft picks. Harden wanted a $60 million contract; the Thunder stayed firm at $55.5 million (per ESPN). Perhaps it was fitting that, as reported by Royce Young, OKC majority owner Clay Bennett (net worth around $400 million)
spent his final weekend courting Durant from a Holiday Inn Express. Warriors
majority owner Joe Lacob, by contrast, doled out in 2012 what was at the time a
risky $44 million contract to Steph Curry. He took the heat (and boos)
for trading away fan favorite Monta Ellis that same year. He paid Klay Thompson
and Draymond Green when the time came to do so. The front office hired a
general manager with no GM experience (Bob Myers) and paid a coach who had zero coaching experience (Steve Kerr). Both have gone on to win NBA awards at their respective positions.
OKC general manager Sam Presti failed to do (among
other things) what I recognized and have said since this site’s inception over
four years ago: trade Westbrook. Now, in the twisted irony, Westbrook will, in all likelihood, be
the last piece of their core to be traded. Presti could never quite get the
right surrounding pieces to calm KD and Westbrook in their love-hate
relationship. As we have already seen, the hate in that relationship will be highlighted in weeks to come.
Relationships are important people!— DWade (@DwyaneWade) July 4, 2016
Despite all of OKC’s success, a cloud of unease
always lingered over Chesapeake Arena. Coaching and managerial decisions in OKC's isolation offense made shots a competitive asset. In Golden State's fluid, assist-heavy offense they aren't. One more win in their 2016 season may have
relieved that tension enough to sign the pair of superstars to contract
extensions, but that win didn’t happen. Where OKC failed, Golden State succeeded. And Durant, after
struggling for nine years, wanted a taste of true success. Wouldn’t you?
KD changed. KD is impulsive. KD is easily influenced. Why does everyone who leaves OKC get slammed on their way out? https://t.co/y8uFGErssF— Bill Simmons (@BillSimmons) July 6, 2016
I think it can be universally agreed upon that Kevin Durant
had every right to leave Oklahoma City. Even Stephen A. Smith agreed to that.
(More on Screamin’ A. later.) The corollary to OKC’s front office failures is
that KD had every right to leave.
Losing hurts a player’s image, and if one’s image is hurt,
so is their brand. The Jordan brand still looms large over the NBA, and there
is no doubt that the tech-centric Bay Area would have appeal for Durant, a
Nike-sponsored and brand-conscious athlete. I wrote in 2013 that, in part because of the area, Golden State would soon be better than OKC. Who would’ve known that on July 4, 2016, the Bay Area would
poach OKC’s once-in-a-generation superstar? This brings us to good old random
chance.
Injuries happen. Suspensions happen. OKC has had more than
their fair share of injury history with Durant and Westbrook over recent years.
Golden State never knew if Curry’s ankles would
last. The Warriors dealt with both injuries and suspensions in 2016 and didn’t
use either as an excuse for losing the NBA Finals. Whether it was Curry going
down against the Blazer, Draymond being suspended for Game 5, or Bogut
exiting with injury in the Finals, injuries and the unexpected happened. To what degree did it impact
the outcome? Who cares. All the theoretical simulations in the world may have
ended in a Warriors repeat instead of a Cavs upset, but none of that occurred
in the actual 2016 NBA playoffs. There are enough “what ifs?” in NBA history to
prove that random chance is ubiquitous.
Loyalty and Hypocrisy
The Wade situation is a good reminder that loyalty is basically a PR term deployed to get players to do stuff that isn't in their interests— ☕netw3rk (@netw3rk) July 7, 2016
Cleveland Cavaliers fans were just as quick to jump on the excuse train
when they lost the 2015 NBA Finals as they were to burn LeBron James’ jersey in
2010. Yet somehow LeBron forgave the city. The city loved LeBron once again.
Most impressively, LeBron forgave Cavs owner Dan Gilbert who bashed LeBron as
narcissistic, selfish, disloyal, cowardly along with the empty and ultimately
false claim that he would bring Cleveland a championship before LeBron earned
his first. How many people can say that they willing went back in to work for a
boss who publicly shamed them? And the team bounced back in 2016.
Once Durant announced he was leaving, the jersey burning insanity reappeared. No
loyalty, some fans cried. Nine years apparently means nothing. All of the
community work means nothing. The MVP and Finals appearances mean nothing.
So there are okc fans burning Durant jerseys and also hoping he doesn't come through with this contract? 🤔🤔— elijah (@ElijahAbramson) July 5, 2016
Loyalty in sports is rare and it is a two-way street. And
let’s take a minute to remember a few moments just in the past decade that put
loyalty to the side:
- Kobe Bryant asked to be traded from the Los Angeles Lakers more than a handful of times. In the end, Phil Jackson and Shaquille O’Neal were ousted. Kobe is still praised for loyalty to LA.
- Derrick Rose was born and raised in Chicago. This off-season, Chicago dealt him away to the New York Knicks.
- Dwyane Wade is the Heat. He is Miami. Few athletes are the face of their city more than Wade is to Miami. Pat Riley and the Miami mafia were supposed to take care of him. He is now a Chicago Bull on a near-$50 million contract.
- LeBron James famously departed Cleveland for South Beach. We all know what happened from there.
As a San Francisco Giants fan, I also watched All-Star
second baseman Jeff Kent leave SF and eventually play for the rival Los Angeles
Dodgers. Closer Brian Wilson signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers after being an
instrumental part of our 2010 World Series run, the first championship San
Francisco baseball had ever seen. What about guys who like Johnny Damon, Roger
Clemens, and even Babe Ruth who jumped from one side to the other side of arguably sports most historic rivalry?
Let’s revisit the (lack of) loyalty that Oklahoma City
showed its own guys. James Harden. Serge Ibaka. Scott Brooks. What about the
“original sin” when ownership decided to rip the franchise from Seattle? If a
team can’t show loyalty to a city…is there even such a thing as loyalty in
sports?
Now for the most ridiculous hypocrisy that I’ve seen.
Stephen A. Smith had a tantrum over Durant’s decision to bolt David to join
Goliath. Yet, like Sporting News wrote, didn’t Smith himself leave a small newspaper to join the
“biggest name in sports news”? Charles Barkley also chimed in. (After all, his
favorite pastime is ripping anything to do with the Warriors.) Did amnesia kick
in when he said Durant is “cheating” to win a title? He demanded a trade from
the Suns and ended up with two future Hall of Famers in his own career. Smith and Barkley, in particular, are prone to
oversimplification and negligence of facts. They give nice soundbites, yes, but
a ten-year-old with a keyboard could write 140-character tweets with the same
superficial opinions.
Carmelo Anthony gets criticized for taking too much money
and not prioritizing winning. Miami will likely be criticized for failing to
give a past-his-prime Dwyane Wade his money. LeBron has gone from loved to
hated somehow back to loved again by most NBA fans. And unlike Durant, LeBron
had a televised decision and a party where he proclaimed “not one, not two, not
three…” Somehow, opinion re: the Warriors have gone from “73-9 means nothing
because they didn’t win a championship!” to “how is a 73-9 team getting Kevin
Durant???” Maybe in light of the lack of consistency in response to stars moving around the NBA, none of this is all that surprising.
One of the 2011 NBA Collective Bargaining Agreement's goal was to help small market teams. It
backfired when the new TV deal ballooned the salary cap for all 30 teams. If
anyone deserves criticism, it’s Adam Silver, NBA owners, and the NBA Players
Association for all agreeing to a system that tries to spread talent across the
league. Losing the player max contracts could be one way to fix "a broken system." This
would force teams to either spend a huge amount on one superstar player or
spread the wealth among lower-tier stars.
I have a different definition of coward. Men who don't raise their kids, abuse women, take advantage of the poor.— Marcus Thompson (@ThompsonScribe) July 6, 2016
Men who change teams? Nah
People are going to find something wrong when they are on
the losing side of a trade or acquisition. Did OKC fail to put themselves in position to keep
Durant? Yes. Period. Did the Warriors put themselves in the best position to
acquire him? No doubt about it. Was there luck involved? There always is. But
to blame Durant and the Warriors for using the system to their advantage is to
blame Sam Hinkie for tanking in Philadelphia. It is misplaced blame. Look to
those who set the rules of the game to question the “fairness” of the rules; you might be surprised to find that those who agreed to the rules are the same ones complaining about them. Don’t blame the Golden State Warriors who played by the rules and
successfully optimized their ultimate goal of winning. Especially when it is a group of guys with character and class.
Former NBA commissioner David Stern made a highly scrutinized
decision when he vetoed the Chris Paul to the Lakers trade (a trade that I
thought should’ve gone through despite having a vested fan-interest in it being
vetoed). Conveniently, a Laker fan recently wrote to me that the
Kevin Durant to the Warriors trade should have been vetoed just like that Chris
Paul trade.
I’d be willing to bet he would’ve been just fine if the
Lakers had acquired the future Hall of Fame point guard.
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