Kevin Durant’s NBA “Life Story”

By: Paul Scofield

Kevin Durant has been getting a lot of negativity throughout the basketball world for just over a year.  The reasoning for this makes sense to most, but not if you followed his career from start to present.  This man’s exposure to selfishness is unbelievable, and that’s only considering his NBA career.  Kevin Durant is an amazing talent on the court, and everyone has been looking passed that because of decisions he’s made.  If he makes decisions to better his chances at winning a championship, why is he any different than the majority of the NBA?  This is a basic breakdown of the career of Kevin Durant and the main occurrences that went on around him.

Durant was drafted by the Seattle Supersonics 2nd overall in the 2007 Draft.  The Portland Trailblazers took a pass on him to take Greg Oden #1 overall, huge mistake by the Portland organization.  The owner of the Supersonics was a man worth billions of dollars, Howard Shultz.  That’s probably needless to say if you know who exactly Howard Shultz is.  If you don’t know, he would be the owner of Starbucks.  He basically said, “no, I would rather sell the team and have them moved out of Seattle than paying $250 million on a new basketball arena.”  That’s all that had to be done to keep a professional basketball team in Seattle, but Mr. Shultz decided to pocket that money and sell the team.  Kevin Durant witnessed his owner basically say that the team isn’t worth his time or money to keep in Seattle, and just like that.  The team is sold and packed up to move to Oklahoma City.  Mr. Howard Shultz wasn’t “loyal” to the city or team/players he’s employing.

Now, in Oklahoma City with a new owner and a new name, new atmosphere.  This team is now winning games, the new owner is great and Durant has been paired with Russell Westbrook and complimented by James Harden.  Chemistry is there and everyone seems happy.  Unfortunately, another billionaire owner wanted to avoid a “luxury tax” so they ship James Harden to the Houston Rockets.  Harden was notified via phone that he was expected to immediately make the move to Houston.  This word “loyalty” comes to mind again.

Kevin Durant has sat back as a young NBA superstar and watched these things happen, he’s kept quiet and went with the flow.  Just remember, all of this is new to him.  Now that he’s probably sitting back trying to figure things out and how everything works, he also has to process his 1st and 2nd coaches being fired.  PJ Carlisimo and Scotty Brooks both has winning records.  The coach’s job is to win games, they were getting that job down.  What message is this sending a young superstar Kevin Durant?  The word “loyalty” is becoming a questionable trend in this short NBA career thus far.

We now take a look around the league and what’s going on right in front of him.  He has to sit back and watch Kevin Garnett leave Minnesota.  A man that everyone thought was going to stay in Minnesota as a career guy, gone.  He then watched LeBron James leave Cleveland for South Beach.  Both of these particular players were rewarded for making their moves.  These two aren’t the only players, these are just two main stream examples I’ve chosen to use.  Ray Allen is one of the most unloyal players of my lifetime as well, and KD had to sit back and watch that as well.

Now, Kevin Durant is a smart young man.  He begins to absorb what’s going on and transform himself into someone that could flourish mores than he already has been.  He’s had to adapt to the NBA superstar life.  He switches agents and immediate signs a $300 million dollar deal.  He’s rewarded for changing agents, and it didn’t take any time at all.  It almost felt like the deal was put into place before he switched agents.  For some reason, the word “loyalty” is losing it’s meaning with every word that you read, hasn’t it?

Should he feel guilty about what he’s done and the decisions he’s made?  Absolutely not, he’s sat back and watched Clay Bennett and Howard Shultz and Kevin Garnett and LeBron James, amongst others of course.  All these guys he’s looked up to, just like other people do, all looked at the word “loyalty” and laughed at it.  Quite literally at that.  Kevin Durant adapted to his surroundings, he adapted to the NBA life and learned how things worked and he learned this more quickly than most other players do.

Let’s do a quick recap on this situation.  He witnessed a billionaire not give up $250-$300 million for a new arena and let a team move out of Seattle, where it has called home for 50+ year.  He watched another billionaire owner ship James Harden over pennies to his net worth.  He was rewarded for firing his agent and hiring a new one.  Now he’s signed with Golden State, probably the most talented team in the history of the NBA, definitely of the current generation at least.  And what was the outcome of that signing in the first year of the contract?  He was rewarded with a NBA Championship and a Finals MVP.

This is why the world “loyalty” means little to nothing in the sports world nowadays.  It’s not the fault of Kevin Durant, it’s the fault of years and years of adaptation from players and the league itself.