Will the Oklahoma City Thunder fans boo or cheer Kevin Durant when he returns to the Chesapeake Energy Arena for the first time as a member of the Golden State Warriors?
We’ll have to wait until February to find out.
From ESPN.com’s Marc Stein:
The Oklahoma City Thunder are tentatively scheduled to play host to Kevin Durant as a member of the Golden State Warriors for the first time in February, according to league sources.
Sources told ESPN.com that the Thunder’s first home date of the season against Durant and the Warriors has been provisionally earmarked for Feb. 11, although changes can still be made before the league officially releases the entire 2016-17 schedule, which is expected to happen within the next week.
Durant’s first game against Russell Westbrook and the rest of the Thunder is tentatively scheduled in the second week of the season, on Nov. 3 in Oakland.
February is a long time to wait for Durant’s return to Oklahoma City. But at least we won’t have to wait long at all for him to square off against Russell Westbrook and some of his other former teammates. That, per Stein, will happen in Oakland during the first week of the season.
Delaying Durant’s return to Oklahoma City until midway through the season won’t do anything to curtail the hype around it. But it might give disgruntled Thunder fans time to heal. They will have had more than six months to recover from Durant’s departure. Their resentment may subside, or they might be more focused on how the Russell Westbrook-led Thunder are faring. Maybe they’ll even cheer Durant by that point.
Of course, whatever the prevailing response is, Durant will still face more than his fair share of boos. Losing an all-time talent like himself isn’t something a city and fanbase just gets over. So while these next six months or so may give Thunder loyalists time to let their new reality sink in, it probably isn’t enough time for them to forgive, let alone forget, what he did.
