It could strongly suggest that. It might also suggest that he doesn't like playing with Westbrook. Or that he felt that if he was going to be giving up touches to a lead guard, it should be somebody more efficient than Westbrook. It could also suggest, as you pointed out, that Durant was set on Golden State and this was his one opportunity to get there. Those are all real possibilities that have nothing to do with Westbrook leaving OKC.
Can you think of a scenario where he wins a title this coming season, then doesn't feel as if the Warriors were his best shot at another title? Because we know they will pay him.
The West regular season was great last year when the Warriors played the Spurs. Now both leagues are going to be like the East. The East playoffs were bad last year. Now both leagues are going to be like the East. The finals were great this year. Now they won't be. Just my opinion. I hope I'm wrong.
How do you know all of this already? We are still several months away from the regular season starting.
I don't "know" it. I suspect they're going to see that they killed themselves in the regular season last year and didn't win it all while the Cavs took it easy in the regular season and won and decide that's the better approach. Either way that's not the point. If they do decide they want to go for a regular season wins record I'm not really going to care anyway. I'm not impressed by the best players deciding they don't want a challenge and want to all play together kicking everyone's ass. Again, that's an opinion. I said already I hope I'm wrong and the league is competitive.
I have thought of that parallel. Quite different. The sixers had a guy, Dr. J. as their star that was not good enough to be the feature guy on a championship team, not with Kareem, Magic and Bird around. Moses was the missing piece, and the best player.
I know you probably don't have specific evidence, but can you provide insight on why you think this? To me, it's at most 50/50 one and done, probably more likely he stays.
By "everybody" you mean "not everybody" right? Because although there have been posters says that this makes them think less of KD there's also been a lot of people saying they don't blame KD at all.
What? The Warriors totally outclassed the Spurs in the regular season, beating them handily 3 of 4 and losing once without Iguodala and Bogut in SA. The Spurs have added Pau Gasol which should improve them a bit even if Duncan retires. Also, the Finals were only competitive because Green was suspended for game 5 and then Bogut and Iguodala got hurt plus of course Curry was pretty clearly not 100 percent. I strongly disagree that that series was anywhere near "great", most games weren't even competitive one way or the other.
Don't you realize that games are played on paper ... where no one ever gets injured?
Before those games they were exciting games. You weren't excited for those games? Will you be more excited to watch the Spurs and Warriors this year? if so, great. Maybe this is just a matter of opinion. I'm pining for not knowing who is going to be in the finals before the season starts. If you think anyone other than the Cavs and Warriors have a chance, great. I don't. I did last year.
And not to mention that people who are kind of in between. People who well understand the move but, at the same time, are somewhat disappointed by it for the reasons that have already been discussed. Said differently, it's not even that some are pro and some are anti; there's a swath of people who are in the middle-ish zone.
It didn't hurt for Cleveland to have Irving and Wiggins in the fold when Lebron decided to go back there. If they had turned out like, say, the Nets, there's no reunion.
Because GS wouldn't have the money next summer to pay him, and clearly that's where he wanted to be.
The Finals were only competitive because the refs totally changed the way contact was called, both inside and out, from game 1 to game 6.
Why wouldn't they have the money next year? They could have just resigned Curry using his Bird rights after they made it official with Durant.
Magic and Kareem were different as they weren't really of the same era (same as Duncan and Robinson). But as for McHale and Worthy and Pippen - who knows how good they could have been if they had been on their own team but for history, they are not going to be considered in the same class as Bird, Magic, and Jordan.
Awesome! Caliendo playing Freeman playing basketball players is a great 21st Century American voice on the 4th of July. 5th too.
Agreed. It's likely not GSW's choice. It's got to be Durant - three possibilities: 1) He wants to get paid next summer, when the cap spikes again. 2) He wanted the opportunity to leave if it is a bad fit. 3) He wasn't sure about leaving OKC and GSW offered an opt-out carrot like a good drug dealer.
I agree with this 100%. To the "KD can go wherever he wants bla bla bla" crowd. Yeah, no shit. Until you mentioned that to me, I was crying next to my cell phone and frantically refreshing my emails because there's no way my good buddy Kevin forgot to consult me before making his final decision.
Because its not just Curry. They are looking to compete next season too and absent Durant they would have likely brought back Harrison Barnes at a max deal and either resigned Ezeli or his replacement.
From a Warriors perspective, I can't see this being overkill given that they just lost the title. They were arguably missing something against better competition and they got that in Durant. They also made a team that nearly beat them in the western finals substantially weaker, a value by itself.
My bad, I honestly skimmed through the responses and reactions the past few pages, and I was also taking in to account how some of my friends reacted when they heard the news. For the most part they were angry, and thought it was a chicken shit move. I should've chosen different words or maybe paid closer attention to the sentiments in this specific thread before I said "everyone".
"All you guys do is write about the game. You don't know what it's like to be out there... Go back to clacking away at your keyboards, nerds."
I am sure the vast majority of fans see it the same way. But how many non-Warriors and non-Celtics games will you be interested in watching this year?
I'm probably the wrong person to ask, since I subscribe to League Pass every year. Yeah, I feel like the Warriors are prohibitive favorites to win it, but so were the Heat in '11(?) and we saw what happened in the Finals that year. Nothing is set in stone.
That mythical team just wasn't going to happen without an at-least-borderline-HOF #2 and All-Star #3 playing alongside him, period end of story. That's the league now. Go anywhere else, and there was significant risk that it never comes together. It was pretty unlikely he was going to surpass Bird, Magic, Jordan, or LeBron anyways, and playing with Steph Curry isn't going to freeze him out of the top-10 mix along with Russell/Wilt/Kareem/whoever.
As per the below, I think there haven't be, but there increasingly will be.
No, I definitely can't, but this is where "it's a different era" is relevant and determinative, because there's no denying there's a distinct split between Jordan-and-earlier versus LeBron-and-after in terms of how players view their competition outside of the 48 minutes on the court, mainly due to social media and LeBron himself. I unequivocally think we're better off for it, and should generally be applauding athletes for taking more agency over their destinations and viewing their choices as part of a roster whole and not as a pure revenue play.
Well, I think there's definitely a scenario where he listens to everyone heaping the bullshit on him (a lot of it in this thread) that he had to join a loaded team to win a title. Then he wants to go out and prove it by winning with a different team, whether that be the Celtics, Spurs, Clippers, or someone else.
That's a good read. It's not from Aldrige though, it's from an Oklahoma writer Royce Young.
