NBC- Three weeks ago, Kevin Durant’s sitting there at dinner, telling him “Hey, I’m coming back, man. Don’t worry about it.” And now, Russell Westbrook has been kind of thrown into this in having to decide his future a summer earlier than expected.
Kevin Durant, more so than even that, was telling people, “Hey, yeah, I mean I’m coming back.” Like I said in there, a week before Kevin Durant sat down in the Hamptons, he was in Oklahoma City ready to make an offer on a multi-million-dollar house. So, the guy was pretty serious about coming back, and then things turned rather quickly for him to leave. And there’s no doubt that the organization felt a little bit burned by this. You heard the narrative. Pretty sure we all did. It seemed like the en vogue perspective was to treat one of top 3 players in the NBA signing with the team that just beat him in heartbreaking fashion like it was simply a move made to further his career. I couldn't be the only person that heard people spouting off these types of questions like Kevin Durant was Fred in the Sales Department... - "Wouldn't you take a better position if it were presented to you?" - "All things being equal, wouldn't you choose to live in a nicer city with more opportunities?" - "Wouldn't you choose to make your job easier if you could?" Now, being a competitive person I have always felt vengeful in defeat. That's why I find the idea of comparing one of the best athletes of my generation to some schmuck rummaging through spreadsheets and staring at the clock 30 times an hour to be absolutely preposterous, but if you want to play then I'll play. Let's say Kevin Durant - despite being 6'11 (7 foot on a good day), possessing an unforeseen skill set, and participating in a profession based solely on head-to-head competition - is just like every one of us. Does that not make him the single worst co-worker of all time? I don't care that he lied in retrospect. That's what athletes do. Hell, that's what everyone does. People change their minds. I'm just not going to sit here and praise the guy for doing what's best for him when the people whose jobs he made exponentially more difficult with his departure had to find out second hand. Russell Westbrook worked in close proximity with Kevin Durant for 8 years. They depended on one another. They made each other's lives easier (for the most part). I don't want to speak on their friendship because I don't know the extent of it, but I do know that KD was at Westbrook's wedding. Safe to say that level of familiarity is worthy of a phone call, no? Not saying it would have been a fun conversation. Hell, maybe it wouldn't even have been a cordial conversation. Fact of the matter is that it was a necessary conversation, and Kevin Durant is pretty goddamn cowardly for actively avoiding it. As long as we are asking questions that don't take career paths into consideration, how about this one... - If you worked side by side with someone for damn near a decade and told them you had no plans to leave would you tell them directly if you had a change of heart that was going to negatively effect them? Don't worry. It's rhetorical.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Categories
All
Archives
January 2020
|