For years and years, the adages ”Respect is earned, never given”, and ”Let your actions do the talking”, have been taught as words to live by. Many top pro athletes are taking the exact opposite approach to these philosophies. The result has fostered a generation of players who appear more as prima-donnas rather than the role models we looked up to years ago. Kevin Durant recently set the media abuzz with two huge ovations that have crowned him as the NBA’s top prima-donna.
While playing for the Oklahoma City Thunder, Kevin Durant had two other soon to be perennial all stars on his team in Russell Westbrook and James Hardin. This was a ready made power team with enough talent to be dominant for years. Rather than patiently developing their game priming an OKC team for years of success, all three of the players departed for other teams. The world would find out later that Westbrook and Hardin were in the running for Durant’s prima donna crown too. KD moved on to Golden State in search of a championship ring.
Moving to Golden State was a safe bet for KD in 2016. After all, the Warriors had already earned the title in 2015 and retained its core of top players from that team. Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green were a ’big three’ to be reckoned with regardless of the addition of Durant in 2016. Durant picked up championship rings with the Warriors in 2017 and 2018, and missed out on one in 2016. Interestingly enough, the Warriors’ 2016 finals loss is attributed to Draymond Green’s absence (suspended for game five of the finals series).
Since then, KD went on to the Brooklyn Nets in 2019 to unite with Kyrie Irving, another franchise hopping trainwreck. KD’s attempt at assembling a superteam in Brooklyn went off the tracks in 2020 adding James Hardin to the mix. Surely a Durant, Irving, Hardin superteam would result in the Nets regularly competing for titles, right? All three players individually are super, but Nets’ management forgot about the team component with this squad. Having these three selfish players all on the same team resulted in the spontaneous combustion of the Brooklyn Nets. Winning seasons in 20-21 and 21-22 with prompt playoff departures were all that the Nets could answer for their investment in these three attention hungry players.
Now KD wants respect; he’s attempting to earn it in the court of public opinion. KD’s social media posts and interviews have demonstrated his selfish mindset which clearly does not mesh with the needs of the teams he plays for. His efforts to convince the NBA and its fans that he deserves respect are backfiring horribly.
KD recently stated that while this year’s 2022 Warriors team (sans Durant) was capable of winning the title without him, the 2017 and 2018 Warriors titles would not have been had if KD weren’t on those teams. Calling these comments petty would be a vast understatement. Of course we will never know if those teams would have won titles without KD, but here’s what we do know. The 2016 team (with KD on it) lost the title when Draymond Green was missing. Green actually has a better case for the ’if I weren’t on the team…’ argument than KD has, though he’s never made that case publicly.
While Green’s personality and antics are a handful, what Green understands that KD does not, is that it takes a cohesive TEAM to win a title. A superteam only works if that squad of top players can play as a TEAM. KD has not figured this out yet. Durant has now requested a trade from the Nets superteam that he configured himself. Evidently, playing with Kyrie Irving and James Hardin was not enough to catapult KD’s Nets to championship success. Without a doubt these guys are top notch individual players. However, they are selfish headcases who have long since forgotten that it takes teamwork and practice to become a championship caliber unit.
Kevin Durant is in the upper echelon of the best players of his generation. Sometime this summer, Durant will likely assemble another superteam (there are rumblings that he may try to stay with Kyrie Irving when heading to the next team), and he may even win another title. Regardless, he has cemented his legacy not as a great player or winner of multiple championships but instead as a whiney spoiled star whose attitude is more suited for an individual sport. KD should have taken up elite level swimming instead. He could have done all of the complaining he wanted underwater, and the rest of us would not have had to listen to it.
Aretha Franklin’s famous song “Respect” sings the tune of a woman warning a man that if she doesn’t get his respect, he will come home one day and see that she is gone for good. Throughout his career, Kevin Durant has sung the same song to the franchises he has hopped to, only to leave them to pick up the pieces after raiding their financial coffers. Mostly though, his departures have done big favors for the franchises he has left. While Durant brings great individual play, he also brings big headaches to the squads he plays for; the Nets migraine will be over later on this summer for sure. He would be better off letting his game play earn respect, rather than asking for it in the form of disrespectful social media posts and passive aggressive interviews. The Queen of Soul is turning in her grave as Kevin Durant sings in woeful karaoke of her timeless anthem.
Paul MacDonald - Sports Broadcaster 