The cruel poetry of Kevin Durant’s decision

It would be poetic if it weren’t so heartbreaking. That Kevin Durant would choose the Golden State Warriors over the Thunder. In many ways, the Warriors have become everything that the Thunder thought they would be. Smart drafting, shrewd management, and good fortune led to a championship in 2015, and, in 2016, it led to the greatest regular season in NBA history.

The Warriors weren’t a bought team. The enviable collection of talent–composed of two-time MVP Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green–came from the draft. Their success developed over time, melded by the shared experiences of being together in the formative years of their NBA careers.

That was supposed to be the Thunder. Durant and Russell Westbrook formed the core that would set a new standard for team building. Instead, the promise of a dynasty became a case study in what if. Instead of multiple NBA championships, the Thunder raised divisional banners. And now, instead of one more run at validating the Thunder blueprint for sustainability, the team’s foundation bolts to a team that ultimately became the Thunder’s dream realized.

Poetic.

It’s hard to believe that a franchise so primed for sustainable success, and so fortunate to have Durant fall to them as the second pick in the 2007 draft, could end up with such unfathomable misfortune.

It wasn’t always this bleak. In fact, the bleakness is exasperated by unbridled optimism that used to flow through the franchise. After the 2009 season, a 23-59 campaign, the Thunder completed an astounding turnaround, winning 50 games and making the playoffs for the first time in franchise history. In the playoffs, the young Thunder, led by Kevin Durant, pushed the mighty Los Angeles Lakers to six games. After watching their team lose an elimination game, the Oklahoma City home crowd stood on their feet, applauding the resolve of the team, but believing that more was to come.

More was to come, with the Thunder reaching another Western Conference Finals the next season before finally breaking through to the NBA Finals in 2012. Even through the agony of losing the series 4-1 to the Miami Heat, the latest “super team,” there was little doubt that the Thunder’s incredible linear progression would result in a NBA championship.

But unbeknownst to the team and its fans, the first of many misfortunes had already transpired.

Prior to the 2011-2012 season—the season the Thunder reached the NBA finals, mind you—team owners locked out the players, an aged old bargaining ploy to renegotiate the terms of how the league’s pot of money would be shared. Through the lockout, many owners hoped a “hard” salary cap would be enacted. While that goal wasn’t realized, the NBA’s “soft” salary cap added some fangs in the form of repeat penalties for teams that regularly exceeded the luxury tax line. A harsh luxury tax was supposed to slow the momentum of “super teams”—a single team collecting top talent in free agency. The new CBA was supposed to protect small market teams by forcing the richest teams to pay harsh tax penalties for buying teams—a team building tactic that the smallest markets couldn’t afford.

For Oklahoma City, the new CBA had the opposite effect. The good fortune of Durant and Westbrook, along their running mate James Harden, developing into superstars was also misfortune, as players of their caliber demanded the highest salaries that could be offered. As a result, rather than protecting what the Thunder had built—a single team collecting top talent through the draft—the new CBA forced the Thunder to make the difficult decision of jumping into the luxury tax waters (a difficult proposition for one of the league’s smallest markets) or mitigate the financial outlay by dealing Harden.

We all know what the Thunder chose.

But it was going to be okay. The Thunder still had Durant and Westbrook, and for a moment everything seemed to be okay. Harden’s quasi-replacement, Kevin Martin, thrived as a sixth man and helped the Thunder nab 60 wins and the Western Conference’s number one seed.

Then Patrick Beverly happened, ending Westbrook’s (and ultimately the Thunder’s) season. Things were never the same after that, with injury after injury decimating one season after another.  And while injuries to pieces like Serge Ibaka and other role players had a detrimental effect, what held the Thunder back from again reaching the heights of the NBA Finals were injuries to their generational superstars—Durant and Westbrook.

The 2015-2016 season, however, was supposed to be the year the Thunder got back on track—Durant and Westbrook finally both fully healthy, a coaching change, and a desperate push to win big in Durant’s contract year. And it almost was, with the Thunder leading the defending champion Warriors with four minutes to go in game 6, with a win vaulting them to the NBA Finals. The Thunder fell short, though, a few Durant made shots away from victory.

The Thunder carry their values like a prized possession, with none bigger than sustainability. And no players represented that value more than Durant and Westbrook. As a result, a faith developed among most Thunder fans that, despite disappointment, the same unbridled optimism of 2009 should remain in 2016, grounded in the belief that with Durant and Westbrook, the Thunder would always have unlimited potential.

But not anymore.

It’s hard for Thunder fans to face this new reality. When the Thunder preach sustainability, Thunder fans tend to believe it. They want to believe that trading Harden (and Jackson and Ibaka) is a byproduct, not an indictment, of the sustainability model.  They want to believe that everything will be okay because Durant and Westbrook continue to wear Thunder blue.

It’s completely unfair to say that Durant betrayed Oklahoma City. In his 8-year career here (9 with the franchise), Durant was everything you want a superstar to be. Humble, respectful, gracious, and giving. While the Thunder never won a championship, Durant was a transformational figure that was instrumental in Oklahoma City’s development into a “big-league city.” Untold numbers of people can now find Oklahoma City on a map because of what Durant did for Oklahoma City. None of that is lost by his departure.

But the Thunder, and its fans, believed in sustainability. And the final act of misfortune for this seemingly cursed franchise is that the sustainability model always depended upon Durant staying in Oklahoma City.

Maybe we were all wrong. Maybe we were wrong to believe in Durant as the cornerstone of sustainability. Maybe we were wrong to believe that Durant wanted to be sustainability incarnate, when, in fact, maybe Durant just wanted to be a part of something sustainable. And the cruel result of our misguided belief is that when another team, complete with three All Stars and a championship ring, called and offered him a chance to ride the wave of success, Durant jumped aboard, with one of the biggest factors in his decision being Jerry West’s commitment that there would be “no stars” in Oakland.

And now, the Thunder, their model of sustainability dependent upon their best players shining the brightest, lose their biggest star to a team that promised him he wouldn’t be one.

Poetic, isn’t it?