Warriors’ gamble on Durant: trophy or bust
When the Warriors signed Kevin Durant last summer, most people figured they’d acquired a trophy, too.
One of the best basketball players on the planet had joined one of the best basketball teams ever assembled. This new combination surely would result in a championship. Right?
We’ll see. With Golden State starting its playoff series against Portland at 12:30 this afternoon, the team has to go out and do it. It was a risky move, shaking up the team’s successful chemistry. But the Warriors didn’t hesitate. And now, after a regular season that produced an impressive 67 wins, Golden State embarks on a postseason journey that will once and for all determine whether the Great Durant Experiment worked.
Anything less than a championship will be considered a failure.
To understand the pressure,
one has to go back to July, when the Warriors swooped in to sign Durant, a perennial AllStar, former league MVP and one of the top five players in the world. Golden State had come off a remarkable campaign, during which they won more regularseason games than any team in history. The team had just missed winning a second straight championship, losing a heartbreaking Game 7 in the NBA Finals, at home, to the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Most teams would have licked their wounds over the summer and brought back the same roster, hoping to replicate the magic. Not the Warriors. They went out and signed one of the most dominant players in the world. A man who was used to being the face of his franchise. A guy who takes the last shot.
It was a big-time gamble, born of the Warriors’ aggressive business philosophies. Owner Joe Lacob runs his team like a true venture capitalist, always pushing to bring in top talent at every position and never resting on success. The Durant signing is a prime example, raising as many questions as it provided answers.
How would Durant fit in with a team loaded with big names, most notably Stephen Curry, the reigning, back-toback league MVP? And what about Klay Thompson? And Draymond Green? People openly wondered whether this team needed more than one basketball to play.
But general manager Bob Myers had every confidence that head coach Steve Kerr would find a way to make it work. So far, Myers has been proven right. But the regular season is a preamble to the main event. The Warriors will be tested in the playoffs.
“You have to take risks to succeed in anything. I think we felt like this was not a high-risk move,” Myers told The Chronicle in a sit-down before the postseason. “But that doesn’t mean it’s going to work. We knew with (Durant) coming aboard, the expectations would reach a level we hadn’t seen before. But you have to embrace that, and have a team, players and coaches that can withstand that. Because it can buckle you. Pressure can buckle people. But I think they’ve responded well.”
By all accounts, Durant’s easygoing personality and lack of ego helped immensely. The same goes for the Warriors’ existing superstars, who not only welcomed the man they call “KD” into the fold, but actively lobbied for him to join the team. It’s a unique group the Warriors have put together, more selfless than what one usually sees in the NBA.
And that particular trait — which seems like it would be a great asset — almost undid the experiment. Early in the season, Durant’s new teammates were almost too deferential to the 6-foot-11 forward. Curry, especially, seemed to have lost some of the freewheeling mojo that made him great.
“We talked about it, after the Cleveland game on Christmas Day,” said Kerr, referring to a nationally televised loss to the Warriors’ arch-rivals. “We had gotten away a little bit from what makes us who we are. A lot of that was just trying to incorporate Kevin in, combined with Steph’s own reluctance to dominate the ball, and maybe my propensity to try to spread the ball around offensively.
“And then I think what we both realized, and what we realized as a team, Steph can be Steph and it’s not going to affect Kevin. He’s still going to score. Kevin will score 20 points every night, no matter what . ... Most importantly, (Durant) doesn’t have to shoot a lot to be happy on the floor.”
It started to jell in January, with Curry and Durant finding a happy medium on the court. Thompson was still getting his shots. And Green focused on his defense, sealing his reputation as one of the best defenders in the game. It looked as if the Warriors had made all the right moves ... until Durant went down with a knee injury in February. For a brief moment, it looked as if the whole thing could go horribly wrong.
Luckily for the Warriors, Durant’s injury was not season-ending. He had hyperextended his knee but looked like he would return in time for the playoffs. Ironically, the Warriors played some of their best basketball of the season without him, running off 13 straight wins near the end of the season. Curry started looking tremendous. People began wondering whether Golden State was actually better off without its backup MVP.
Those questions were quashed once Durant returned to the court for the last three games of the regular season. He looked confident and quick, and you could see that Curry didn’t change a thing once his teammate came back. By all accounts, the Warriors go into the playoffs wellrested, well-tested and well-adjusted.
Which brings us back to the core premise: It’s championship or bust for these Warriors. Can they handle the pressure?
“Knowing the group that they have, pressure doesn’t really bother that group,” said former Warriors assistant and acting head coach Luke Walton, now leading his own team in the Lakers. “They’re light. They have fun. They’re a very confident group. It’s one of the things that makes them so special. They kind of thrive on pressure. They don’t let it affect them in a negative way.
“I think they’re the best team in the league.”
They should be. The roster Myers put together is monstrous. One might argue the bench is weaker than the past two seasons, but Kerr has worked hard to develop young talent to fill out the holes. His success in that endeavor may prove pivotal in the playoffs, when injuries and matchups can force secondary players into high-pressure situations.
But if you know anything about Kerr, you know he’s going to take a measured, philosophical, intellectual approach to the situation.
“Obviously, the ultimate goal is to hang the banner, but what we’re accomplishing, what we’re experiencing together, we’ll remember these days for the rest of our lives,” said Kerr. “And that’s incredibly valuable. Hopefully, it all ends well. But who knows?”