No — the closest parallel to Durant’s decision would have been if LeBron had joined Boston, which had knocked out James two of the past previous three seasons, had an already established big three, and had already won a championship with the existing core of that team. And just imagine the hysteria if he had done that. But in my opinion, even LeBron joining the Celtics isn’t remotely as bad as joining a 73 win team, especially considering he wasn’t leaving a talent-laden team with an elite player like Westbrook. I want to be clear here: I don’t think there is any question that Durant made the logical decision if his sole goal was to win as many championships as possible. He basically checkmated the league — nobody else really has a chance. But I don’t understand why he can’t acknowledge that he has every right to make the move, but still criticize him for taking the easy way out, especially given how hard the media (including Bill Simmons) was on James.

You make a fair point about the effect of the Boston series. But that LeBron’s last pre-Decision series against the Celtics is the perfect example of the absurd standard he is held to that other athletes like Durant don’t face. His Game 5 was a terrible performance by James, but if you watch the game again, it’s pretty clear that he was playing hard — he just was looking to pass. Boston had employed Thibs’s defense that loaded up on the strong side and then played Tony Allen on James. Boston was ahead of the curve and James tried to counteract by passing, but it didn’t work. And Game 6, where you claim that James didn’t play hard, he had 27 points 19 rebounds, 10 assists, 3 steals and a block. The dude had 19 rebounds and you are saying that he didn’t play hard. Basically any outcome short of victory and the narrative around James is either that he choked or that he quit (we saw some of this premature criticism after Game 4 of the Finals this year). Can you imagine if James blew a 3–1 lead playing as inefficiently as Durant did in Games 5 through 7 of a Conference Finals? If we are going to be so overly critical of James, we should be applying the same standard to Durant, who is every bit as talented as James yet somehow gets a pass year (usually it’s Westbrook that bears all the brunt of criticism and here when the decision is entirely Durant’s writers are still making excuses for him).