Urgelt
Urgelt
Jul 27, 2017 · 4 min read

Oh, I know very well that plenty of people hollered and screamed over KD’s decision to leave OKC.

I don’t form my opinion by following the herd.

It’s indisputable that KD is an honorable guy. He worked hard during his contract years at OKC and delivered high value. He never badmouthed anyone, even when they badmouthed him. He’s a total pro — he focused on the things that are his responsibility, his contractual obligations and his own needs, and ignored the noise.

He doesn’t lack confidence in his skill. This is obvious — nobody takes the shots KD takes if he doubts his ability.

But basketball is a team sport. One guy can’t do it; it takes a team effort, playing intelligently and with skill. The other players, and the other things franchises do, matter — and not all teams do those other things equally well. GSW has arguably the league’s best front office. GSW plays a brand of team ball that yields touches and generates assists like no other team in the league. GSW plays an aggressive, hard-to-master switching defense better than any other team in the league — and KD felt he could fit into that. Their sports medicine program is elite. Their facilities are elite. Their culture is different; players at GSW are encouraged to have fun playing and to take intelligent risks, and the coach is tolerant when a risk doesn’t pay off. And it’s a larger market with business opportunities in tech that are, shall we say, somewhat lacking in Oklahoma City, which appeals to some millionaires, which KD definitely is. There are people at GSW who KD likes, whose unselfish style of play attracts him. There are egos, of course — there are always egos. But there aren’t any prima donnas at GSW. And that’s just scratching the surface. GSW has an elite basketball program that matches what KD wants to experience.

9 years at OKC convinced KD that OKC wasn’t the right place for his talents to shine or for him to be comfortable going forward.

He was under no contractual obligation to stay. He was under no moral obligation to stay. He was free, as an unrestricted free agent, to sign with any club willing to take him. He complied with the league’s rules.

And it’s his career. His choice.

The critics of his decision are numerous. But we live in a mobile society now. *Most* of us will not stay with one employer for our entire careers. The NBA is no different. Most players move around, and the NBA is configured for it, because moving talent around generates interest and helps to sell the product. Static, unchanging teams would be boring; they would always fall out in the same place in the standings. Dynamic teams are less predictable, more interesting, generate more drama. All NBA teams reconfigure their rosters constantly, and it can’t be any other way.

9 years is a long time in the NBA. OKC was fortunate to have a player with KD’s ability for so long — and he doesn’t appear to regret his time at OKC. But it was his choice to move on, and we should respect that.

GSW with KD added is indeed a formidable team. But in the NBA, there are no ‘gimmes.’ Winning a championship is not easy, ever. It takes commitment, hard work, and even luck. It takes a determination to never stop trying to improve.

Super teams are not bad for the league. The opposite is true: they’re great for fans, great for NBA revenues, great for spurring competing teams to work harder than ever, great for drama, great for presenting superior basketball performances to our eyeballs. This is how the league advances its level of play: several teams dominate the rest, and the rest are dissatisfied and look for ways to climb back into it. The whole league improves. Wishing for absolute parity is a fool’s wish; it’s asking for stagnation.

No great NBA team has ever hung onto the top spot for very long. And so the other teams will make decisions, invest in their franchises, try to hire the right people, to strive for their own moment at the top. A few of them will actually get there. And that’s all good.

It doesn’t bother me at all that my opinion isn’t the consensus opinion of the herd.

A few years back, the herd in Oakland was outraged when the GSW front office sent an athletic Monta Ellis away and put a skinny, baby-faced guy with weak ankles, a guy who played for a small college team, a guy who lacked the physical strength and mass to challenge larger players in the paint or anywhere else, a guy who not only didn’t play angry (as most of the elite players seem to do) but grinned like he was having fun on the floor, into GSW’s starting lineup. Man, but the fans howled. It was a storm pretty much like the storm that erupted when KD made ‘the decision.’

The herd was wrong then, too.

The herd hated LeBron for moving to Miami, then hated him again for going back to Cleveland, and they’ll hate him yet again when he leaves Cleveland for the Lakers or whomever. But the truth is that LeBron’s moves have been good for the league. We’ve seen some great basketball as a result of them. The herd complained, but the the league’s other teams went to work and attempted to challenge his teams, and sometimes, his teams were beaten. But not easily. And not without rising to levels of play that would never happen in a stagnant, boring, predictable league where teams hang onto their players from draft to retirement.

    Urgelt

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    Urgelt