KD
Kevin Durant's decision to join the Warriors was predicated on the team's culture and style of play, both of which are built primarily around selflessness. [1] In the better part of a decade spent as the NBA's preeminent bridesmaid, Oklahoma City failed to add the talent of three future Hall of Famers up to even the sum of its parts, much less anything greater. The Thunder ran a system so impossibly static that pundits somehow felt obligated to ask if consummate teammate Kevin Durant would prove able to share the basketball. Unleashed in Oakland, Durant revealed the breadth of his offensive talents with an efficiency unknown even to him, all while emerging as one of the league's most versatile lockdown defenders. Though he publicly credited Draymond Green and the coaching staff with improving his defensive approach, Durant plainly benefitted from being surrounded by an offense able – and more importantly, willing – to facilitate for him. Freed to take as few as seven field goal attempts in a game (if not called on for more), Durant hounded passing lanes and guarded the basket with ferocity. That a past MVP and 7-time All-Star even had a next level is shocking enough; Durant was wise to recognize the untapped potential few others would dared to have suggested existed.
The Warriors
The aforementioned questions about whether or not Kevin Durant could fit into the Warrior system were put to rest within weeks of his taking the court. Those who did find fault with the Warriors agreeing to sign Durant were concerned less with Xs-and-Os and more with the team's unwillingness to man up and win on their own terms. Though this argument fails to ring quite true in light of past contenders who acquired superstars in successful pursuit of a missing piece (e.g., Malone, Rodman, or even Love), it's worth considering that with the exception of LeBron James [2], KD is the greatest player in history acquired by free agency. It's better, then, to think of the move as the obvious culmination of what I already described two years ago as the best roster engineering in basketball. Since the 2012 Draft in particular, Bob Myers and the rest of the front office have nearly a perfect track record in free agency, drafts, and trades. 2017's roster changes exemplified these decisions even beyond the obvious choice of signing Durant. David West replaced Mo Speights seamlessly. Zaza Pachulia provided the team a body in the low post when it was needed. Most impressively, JaVale McGee joined Shaun Livingston on the Warriors' reclamation list of players who finally reached the potential that the league had seemingly been robbed of. Even if Durant was Bob Myers' (and Draymond Green's) masterstroke, it would not have been possible had not Myers already created the NBA's best working environment – a team whose dynamic (and potential) was so clearly worth enduring an entire year of unrelenting criticism from most people in the world of basketball.
NBA History
11 teams have won NBA titles since 1980. Prior to these Warriors' first title, in the preceding 35 years the trophy had belonged to only 9 teams. 6 franchises traded titles in 31 out of 35 of those years; in other words, correcting for what amounted to anomalies, the Lakers, Celtics, Pistons, Bulls, Spurs, and Heat had averaged 5.17 championships apiece within recent memory. Remarkably, in their quest to destroy parity within basketball, the Warriors and Cavaliers have slightly improved an average franchise's historical likelihood of winning a title. That, of course, is a meaningless but suggestive statistic. It's more telling to think back on the emotional legacy of recent decades of professional basketball. The 1980s belonged to Bird's Celtics and Magic's Lakers, more or less alone. Literal-minded fans might point to the titles of the Bad Boy Pistons or the '83 76ers [3]; few would even claim to think about the unfulfilled potential of young Hakeem's Rockets or anyone else. The 1990s belonged to the Bulls, and anyone claiming to wish that Michael Jordan hadn't skipped baseball and played in more NBA Finals is either an Orlando Magic fan or a liar. [4] Dominance in basketball is not only old news, it's one of the most cherished aspects of the sport's lore. What's easy to forget is that it didn't feel that way at the time: take the immortal Bulls, whose 72 win season was partially explained away in 1996 as a byproduct of expansion, or MJ himself, who stopped receiving MVPs only because people grew tired of him winning every year.
My takeaway from the above, as an openly biased fan enjoying his just desserts after 2 decades of unrelenting mediocrity, is that these Warriors are good for basketball. They have unlocked the full potential of three generational talents [5] and nearly a dozen other high-caliber players. Their managers and coaches have in every other respect enabled one of the most overwhelming runs in the history of American sport. And between them all, they have shown the way towards a brand of basketball befitting the unprecedented levels of talent and athleticism with which the NBA finds itself endowed. It would benefit both non-Warrior fans and the sport itself if other teams across the league found a way to follow suit; in the meantime, the Warriors fully deserve to reap what they have sown.
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