Kevin Durant leaving the Oklahoma City Thunder and joining the Golden State Warriors in 2016 is still considered one of the most questionable moves in NBA history. Durant joined the team that just beat his team in the prior playoffs after blowing a 3-1 lead in the Western Conference Finals. The Warriors had just won 73 games in the 2015/16 season, setting a new record in the NBA.
Many people saw the move like KD was ring chasing and what better way to do so than joining a team that already had three all-stars in Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green. In the end, he won two titles and two Finals MVP in the Bay, but initially, KD felt really bad after he made the decision of joining the Dubs.
During an interview in 2017, Durantula revealed how he felt about himself after leaving OKC. He and his agent Rich Kleiman shared some details about the effects that decision had on KD. Talking with San Francisco Magazine’s Jon Steinberg, KD said he started regretting his move just days after he left the Thunder.
He [Durant] was feeling the full brunt of the Internet’s fury about his perceived betrayal of Oklahoma… and the flak he was taking from people in Oklahoma City who had once professed deep affection for him was overwhelming. “To have so many people just say, ‘F— you,’ that really does it to you,” Durant tells me, still clearly anguished. “Because I truly had invested everything I had into the people I played for… And for those people that I know and love and trust to turn their back on me after I was fully invested in them, it was just… more than I could take. I was upset.
Shortly after he joined the Warriors, before he met everybody in the organization, Kevin wasn’t feeling so good about his call.
“That was before I met anybody from the Warriors and dove into the culture. I was basically on my own,” Durant told Steinberg.
Kleiman said a panicked Durant called him early one morning from his hotel room in China.
“I was up at 6 a.m. and he [Durant] calls me and says, ‘Yo, are you up?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, what’s up?’ And he’s like [yelling], ‘Why the f— did you let me do this to my life?’”
“That hotel was rock bottom,” Durant told Steinberg.
Things got a little better during the summer of 2016. Durant was part of the Team USA that won the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. He revealed he felt better when his peers wish him the best in his new team instead of judging him.
“I was worried about how my peers were going to feel about me,” he told Steinberg. “In my profession, that’s the only thing I care about. So when I was talking to Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan, and they were like, ‘Congrats, man, do your thing,’ and Paul George was like, ‘Congrats, man, I am happy for you,’ and Kevin Love was like, ‘Shoot, do what you gotta do,’ that eased my mind a little bit, because I want that from my peers.”
As we all know, that decision paid off for KD, who won two titles with the Dubs, having outstanding performances in the Finals. He left the Bay last summer and signed with the Brooklyn Nets. He did win two titles with the Warriors, but his tenure at the Oracle Arena was a tumultuous one.
