Durant takes easy route to an NBA title.
Who does Kevin Durant remind you in the NBA Finals?
Magic Johnson? Michael Jordan? LeBron James?
I have to go with Anna Nicole Smith.
The late, great bombshell started out as a waitress at Jim’s Krispy Fried Chicken in Mexia, Texas, then worked in a Houston strip club.
There she met an older gentleman named J. Howard Marshall. Smith became the World’s Greatest Gold Digger when she married the 89-year-old oil tycoon. She was 26. Durant was 27 when he married the J. Howard Marshall of the NBA last July.
By signing a free-agent contract with the Warriors, Durant essentially admitted Oklahoma City was Jim’s Krispy Fried Chicken and he’d never strike championship gold there. So he took his talents to the Bay area to
get a ring or two or three.
That will round out one of the all-time basketball résumés. But he’s kidding himself if he thinks a lot of people won’t look at his legacy and see shades of Anna Nicole Durant.
All the dire predictions after he signed are coming true. The NBA Finals have all the suspense of a Globetrotters’ game. The only thing missing so far is Steph Curry pulling the fakewater-bucket trick on Kevin Love.
Sure, LeBron led the Cavs out of an 0-2 hole last year. But Steph Curry is healthy this year and Draymond Green isn’t getting suspended, and this smells like a five-game series at most.
“The Warriors, in my estimation, have a bigger talent difference between them and the next best team than has ever happened in my time in the NBA,” ABC analyst Jeff Van Gundy told Rolling Stone.
That’s not a bad thing, unless you like to have a little suspense with your
championship series. And in Durant’s defense, it’s not as if super teams are a new phenomenon.
The Celtics won 11 titles in 13 seasons in the late 1950s and 1960s. Boston and L.A. owned the 1980s. The Bulls dominated the ’90s.
But those teams were built organically through drafts, trades and occasional free-agent help. Durant going to the Warriors was like Oscar Robertson deciding to join Bill Russell’s Celtics.
The Big O didn’t have that option. At the risk of sounding like an old man yelling at free agents to get off my lawn, I bet Robertson wouldn’t have joined the Celtics even if he’d had the chance.
Think back to P.E. class when teams were picking sides for kickball or whatever. If the best three or four players managed to team up, what was the point?
It’s been called the Man Code, but really it’s a Competitive Code applicable to all currently recognized genders. If a team pushes you around, as Golden State did to OKC, you don’t throw in with the bullies.
“It was his choice, I have
no problem with him,” Doc Rivers said last July. “But it’s something from a competitive standpoint you would think you wouldn’t do.”
Magic would not have joined the Celtics. Larry Bird would have broken out in hives if he put on a Lakers’ jersey. LeBron never would have … wait, he started all this.
James kicked off the chummy Super Team Era when he went to Miami. Now Durant is hoisting LeBron on his own freeagent petard.
After all my ranting, I must admit Durant is ending up much better off than Anna Nicole.
The Warriors are redefining the game, and it’s a lot more fun sharing the ball with Curry than not having it shared by Russell Westbrook. Durant loves the Silicon Valley lifestyle.
In short, he has found happiness. And soon he will find a championship ring on his finger.
It just won’t have quite the shine it would have if he’d earned it the old-fashioned way.