Mstermisty wrote:Yeah it's just hard to believe you can have a team beat (up 3-1), then lose a heartbreaking series, but yet overall feel good about how you played, and then a couple months later leave your team to join the one that barely beat you? Call me old school but that is just punking out. Yeah, KD will probably win rings now, but he'll do it with a stacked deck, and it won't mean as much as if he had gotten it done his last year in OKC.
I'm disappointed in KD for going to a better team, and at the same time, disappointed that he left the team that almost beat that better team! The first reason is about fairness, the second about loyalty (to a cause, not a place). When I think about it logically, that seems a little inconsistent. But it's not, at least not completely.
On the fairness issue, I think, how much better are the Warriors than the Thunder if the Thunder almost beat them? So this can't upset the balance of power THAT much. But then I remember the Thunder were good largely
because of Durant. So leaving the Thunder really weakens the #2 team and really strengthens the #1, even though they were pretty evenly matched in the WCF.
On the loyalty issue, the guy willingly spent almost a decade in Okla-fucking-homa. It's tough to criticize him for leaving. BUT the Thunder were SO close to getting back to the finals one last time. Westbrook is down for one more year. It just feels like you gotta give it one more try. You've been building something for almost a decade and were SO close last year, just give it one more go. I don't think he owes it to the city, but I think he owes it to the effort he and his teammates have put in so far. That's what I mean by loyalty to a cause. It's about perseverance. And under the circumstances, I think he should have given one more year to see if they could finally win a championship with that team. And to go to the team that beat you just
feels like a betrayal of that effort even though I know the guy is free to do whatever he wants, GS seems like a good group of guys, and they wouldn't have had the cap space next year to get him.
I still like the guy, but I REALLY wish he had stayed another year.
SIDE NOTE: It might actually be good for OKC that this happened. If he had re-upped for one more year and couldn't get it done, there was a good chance that OKC was going to lost BOTH Durant and Westbrook for nothing. Now they at least have a chance to trade Westbrook and get something in return.
