Lee’s strong play early forces Warriors to take notice
What were you doing in August 2016?
Kevin Durant, just weeks after signing a freeagent contract with Golden State, was already initiating a slow-moving sequence of events that, three years later, would crush the hearts of Warriors fans.
Odd? You don't know the half of it. ESPN's first-rate basketball writer Jackie MacMullan laid it all out in a mega story posted Monday night. Most of the story focuses on the moody, mercurial Kyrie Irving. But there is plenty of meat on this bone for Warriors fanatics.
MacMullan begins in Rio de Janeiro during the 2016 Summer Olympics. Durant was on the U.S. team, as were Irving and DeAndre Jordan. When they weren't busy being Olympians they spent time on a cruise ship, the Silver Cloud. Durant and Jordan knew each other from Durant's (unsuccessful) attempt to lure Jordan to the University of Texas basketball program.
Durant and Irving got to know each other better as Olympic teammates, MacMullan writes. Irving, then the property of the Cavaliers, was fresh off a Game 7, 3-point dagger that delivered the 2016 NBA Finals to Cleveland at the expense of the Warriors. Durant was the assurance that nothing like that would ever happen to the Warriors again.
Beginning to see the interconnections here? Per MacMullan:
“We didn't just get to know each other, we got to know each other's friends,” Irving says. “We had daily activities with one another. We started seeking each other out. Talking about everything. Being
locked on a boat for a month brings out different parts in a lot of people. One of the final nights on the Silver Cloud, as Ky, KD and DJ clinked glasses, Jordan recalls Irving saying, “Hey, this would be cool to do for real.”
“I asked him, ‘What you mean by that?'” Jordan says, “and Ky said, ‘Let's all get on the same team and play together.' ”
It was a wish upon a star. Durant was under contract with the Warriors. Though he and Golden State won two titles and he was awarded two Finals MVP trophies, whatever gratification he hoped to gain came in diminishing returns.
Irving met the Warriors (and Durant) again in the NBA Finals, losing this time. He was traded to Boston after the 201617 season. He wore out his welcome in two years.
After his Olympic experience, Jordan played out his Clippers contract before signing in Dallas, heading to New York in a trade and eventually joining his buddies in Brooklyn this offseason.
The kicker from MacMullan:
“The brotherhood was real,” Irving says, “but circumstances kept us apart.”
“There were times when you had to wonder, ‘Is this ever going to really happen?”‘ Jordan says.
In the summer of 2019, with all three players set to be free agents, they connected again.
“We all agreed,” Jordan says, “‘We gotta do this.'”
All that speculation about where Durant would wind up. All that angst. All the insider knowledge.
Apparently it was always a done deal, with a three-year run-up.
Clink!