Honestly social media has gotten out of hand, as just a sports fan it is exhausting reading everything about Kevin Durant is a punk for leaving The Oklahoma City Thunder to go play for the Golden State Warriors. I mean every other thing I see on Facebook is one defending the other and people going at each other’s throats over these two super stars.
So I am here to set the record straight.
Now before I get started, I am going to be as completely unbiased as I can, as being a Warriors fan, before KD arrived, I want this to be something that just sets the record straight on both sides.
So, when KD decided to leave OKC and join the GSW, it was a shocker to myself and every other sports fan within existence, everyone had their own opinions about him leaving, all of OKC were disgruntled and immediately reverted to name calling. Which is the same result LeBron experienced when he made The Decision in Cleveland.
Every fan is allowed to have their opinion, but let’s look at both sides of why they left and who they went to.
LeBron made his much-ballyhooed decision, “The Decision” on national TV announcing where he would further his career, which is perfectly fine, if you are a high school student announcing which college you will be attending to play ball. LeBron held his one-hour TV special, and announced to the entire world that he would be leaving his home town to take his talents to South Beach, where he would start his work at building a championship team.
LeBron went to Miami and started his General Manager skill set and joined Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh, which combined were three of the top five draft picks on their draft class. When the starting lineup was announced for team photos and LeBron stated “Not one, not two, not three, not four…etc.”.
But LeBron did whatever he could to start building his team to win multiple championships.
Next was Kevin Durant blowing a 3-1 lead to the Golden State Warriors in the Western Conference Finals and announcing that he was leaving the OKC Thunder to join the Warriors was announced with a lot of backlash as well.
OKC fans calling KD a cupcake and saying it was a “cake walk” for him to the Finals, which it was, but KD did the opposite of what LeBron did, instead of having multiple press conference and TV specials about how many games they were going to win and championship banners they would hang.
Fast forward to tonight, Golden State and Cleveland are playing in the NBA Finals and both teams are considered super teams, one considered better than the other. GSW is currently winning the series 3-1 and playing again tonight back in Oakland.
Now that we know about both super stars and their transitions, remember that both players left their former team because the current general manager was not adding pieces to their rosters to continue to build a championship roster.
LeBron left Cleveland because he was the only player worth a ring on the roster the first time around. Went to Miami, only won two rings and announced that he left only because he lost to San Antonio in one of the Finals. While KD left because after making it to the Finals and losing James Harden, and then making it to the playoffs multiple times, the GM in Sam Presti made no moves to help improve the roster.
With that being said, who would you consider both of these moves the same, or was one more of a punk move than the other?