Signing Kevin Durant was kind of like finding money for the Golden State Warriors.
Or so team president Rick Welts says.
Though the Warriors heavily recruited Durant over the last year-plus, and while they were widely viewed as the most likely landing spot for him should he leave the Oklahoma City Thunder, they never really expected to get him. As Welts said on CBS Sports Radio’s Tiki and Tierney (h/t CBS Sports’ James Herbert):
“Well, I think we had hope,” Warriors President and COO Rick Welts said on CBS Sports Radio’s Tiki and Tierney. “We, like every other team, probably didn’t think it was going to happen, and I can assure you we had no indication it was going to happen until the phone rang at 7:30 in the morning in Bob Myers’ cabin on Lake Tahoe and Kevin called to give us his decision. I think there was a lot of screaming and yelling going on in the Myers’ cabin at that point in time.”
…
“There’s no commitment from Kevin,” Welts said. “He signed a one-year contract with a player option. So I think the hope and expectation is there’s a business reason for doing that more than there is a basketball reason for doing that. We’ve got to be a place that is as good as he thought it was when he selected the Warriors over the other options that he had. I think we’re going through a really interesting time in our league. We’re all trying to figure out what the new world is going to look like.”
All of this makes sense, except for the tidbit about Durant’s commitment to Golden State. Yes, he will be free agent next summer. Yes, that gives him leverage. Yes, he will have the option of leaving.
But no, he won’t be leaving.
The Warriors didn’t sell Durant on a one-year stay. They pitched him on forging a dynasty. That takes longer than a year. Superteams generally take longer than one season to coalesce into something formative. Maybe the Warriors still win next season’s championship, but there will be growing pains. Durant has to know that.
Unless the Warriors somehow tank next season, inexplicably missing the playoffs or failing to establish any sort of chemistry, Durant isn’t going anywhere. Golden State will have the means to hand him a max deal, even with Stephen Curry’s free agency coming up, and this freshly forged partnership doesn’t have the look and feel of a transient obligation.
