Quote:
Originally Posted by Wild GM
How did he prove that?
He played great but that doesn't prove he can carry a team to a championship. He was able to produce on a loaded team.
The only way to prove he could have won a ring in OKC....was to win a ring in OKC.
Otherwise it isn't much different than the criticism that Lebron got for winning in Miami.
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It's a lot different than LeBron. The Heat won 47 games the year before LeBron joined. The Warriors won 73. Heat were 15 games from winning the title in 2009-10. The Warriors were one game away. And yeah, the Thunder were kind of one game away from eliminating a team who went 73-9. It's not like they were miles away from a title like the 09-10 Heat and Cavs were, they were basically five minutes of better basketball away from at least making the Finals, after beating the 67 win Spurs and the 73 win Warriors to get there. That sounds like a pretty good team.
It might have taken another season, or maybe two, but it definitely could have been done in OKC with Durant. Instead he effectively took the late career veteran approach of trying to gravy train to a ring, kind of like David West. And as we saw last year, LeBron's Cavs ring is viewed significantly more positively than either ring with the Heat. Durant's ring doesn't even mean as much as Kawhi Leonard's, a player he once mocked as a system player. Durant can now be called a gravy trainer. I'd rather be the "system guy" (which in hindsight was a rather moronic comment from KD).