Everything Barry wrote this morning is 100-percent correct, and it’s been six years since the ugly backlash against LeBron James’s decision to leave Cleveland proved that getting mad at an athlete for making an employment decision is one of the shittiest things a sports fan can do. I’m not a Thunder fan, I don’t give a shit about Oklahoma City, and yet the first thing I thought when I learned that Kevin Durant was joining the Golden State Warriors was, “Fuck this!”
It’s a weird feeling, to know that Durant’s decision was completely logical and justified and to still feel a pit of disappointment in my stomach every time I think about it. I spent most of yesterday wrestling with this, trying to answer the question of, “Why the hell do I care?” Here’s what I’ve come up with.
When LeBron, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh formed the Big Three in Miami they instantly became the most terrifying team in the league, but a championship in their first season didn’t feel totally preordained (and didn’t happen). The three had never played together before, and you didn’t have to squint too hard to see issues with how they would fit together and share the ball.
I don’t see any of those cracks when I look at the Warriors, a pre-existing 73-win death machine that is now sliding one of the greatest pure scorers in NBA history—one who doesn’t need the ball in his hands at all times in order to dominate—in place of Harrison Fucking Barnes. The Warriors just pimped out their Death Star by putting another Death Star on it, and I can’t imagine how next season doesn’t end with them winning a championship. That kind of sucks! As wild as it will be to watch the Warriors win another 70-plus games and melt the entire league, it’s never very fun to go into a sports season knowing nobody else really has a chance.
I so badly wanted to see Durant and Westbrook, along with Victor Oladipo and an ever-improving Steven Adams, take one last run at the Warriors in a playoff series. If the Thunder had been swept by the Warriors in this year’s Western Conference Finals, I think this move would sting a lot less by virtue of the “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” maxim. But Durant and Westbrook had those fuckers, man. They had them! They were up 3-1 on the best regular season team in history and looked all set to bring the fight to them again next year. I was looking forward to next season’s inevitable Thunder-Warriors playoff matchup like it was every holiday rolled into one.
What made this NBA season so great wasn’t watching the Warriors chase 73 wins, but watching what happened to them when they finally met a worthy opponent. For a while there, it looked like they were going to coast to a second straight championship, and the indelible image of the season would be that of the Warriors blowing out yet another team while Steph Curry spent the fourth quarter chilling on the bench. But then the Thunder hulked up and gave us a truly spectacular series, and then LeBron James ascended to Heaven and dunked the Warriors into a black hole on his way. Without the Thunder and Cavs rising as worthy challengers, last season would have been pretty lame. Now we’re down to one challenger, and the chances of the Warriors marching unimpeded to another title just got much higher. I’m imagining what it will be like to watch the sucker-ass Clippers go down in five games in next year’s Western Conference finals, and I’m upset.
And finally, fuck Joe Lacob. This dude already tried to convince us that “having Steph Curry” was some brilliant piece of thinkovation that only could have been hatched in Silicon Valley, and then he told us that the next piece of thoughtfluencing that would help him re-conquer the NBA was the truly out-there concept of “sign Kevin Durant.” This dude is about to be in The New York Times puffing his chest and talking shit on a monthly basis while Durant, Curry, and Klay Thompson spend every night making him look like some kind of genius. That’s as good of a reason as any to be mad today.