Kevin Durant’s decision to leave the Oklahoma City Thunder for the Golden State Warriors in the 2016 off-season after coming within minutes of defeating them a month before will go down as one of the most infamous decisions in NBA history.
One would assume it was a decision Durant labored over for days and weeks before deciding to join the 73-win Warriors, apparently it may not have taken Durant long to know where he was going.
Durant and his business partners Rudy Cline-Thomas and Rich Kleiman sat on a panel at the Bloomberg Player’s Technology Summit and this is what Cline-Thomas said:
“Remember 2017, you just lost to the Warriors — no 2016, you had just lost the Warriors, May — you and I get together after the game. I thought I was just gonna focus on not talking about basketball, and you wanted to focus on talking about Silicon Valley — asking me how it was out here.
“You had been following what Andre and I were doing, how it was being surrounded by all these CEOs, innovators and entrepreneurs. And I was like, ‘Wow. First and foremost, like yo — this dude just told me he’s about to sign with the Warriors, right (laughter). So, I was like I’m not gonna tell anybody, didn’t tell anybody whatsoever, didn’t want any rumors to get started…”
This is Durant on when he started really thinking about business opportunities outside of basketball:
“Probably about 2015, I had got hurt. Basketball had always been my world … it stopped, and I had to think about other parts of my life and what I was interested in … it was rough because I didn’t know what I wanted to do or what I liked or what type of person I wanted to be … I started to hear about Andre and more guys around the NBA — especially that play for the Warriors — that took advantage of the opportunities of being in the Bay Area.
“So throughout that whole year, me and Rich were talking about investing in companies and what I like to do outside of ball. Then I (saw) you and just all those questions came out at once and I was basically telling you I was coming to the Warriors (laughter).”
While this all could have been in jest or at least exaggerated, it does bring up some interesting points. Had Durant known he had wanted to be a Warrior during or even before the Thunder’s conference finals match-up with the Warriors and could that have affected his performance or desire to beat them?
It would have made much more sense for Durant to leave OKC if he and Westbrook were unable to get the job done again than it would have if he had just defeated the 73 win Warriors and possibly won his 1st NBA title.
I highly doubt he threw the conference finals after going up 3-1 (he scored 40 points in Game 5), but it is food for thought.
