Oklahoma City Thunder head coach Billy Donovan isn’t planning on developing some elaborate pitch to keep Kevin Durant from leaving via free agency.
When asked what his pitch would be to convince Durant to stay, Donovan says he won’t even bother.
Billy Donovan on what his pitch would be to Kevin Durant: "I have nothing to do with this. This is Kevin's decision."
— Royce Young (@royceyoung) June 1, 2016
One one hand, this shows a lot of respect. Donovan is taking a no-pressure approach, which sometimes produces the best results.
On the other hand, it’s hard to believe the coach would be comfortable watching his best player walk out the door without at least putting up a fight to convince him to stay. And make no mistake about it, Durant is more valuable in the long run than Westbrook, who seems to get the yips under pressure.
Durant is going to have plenty of options available to him this summer (check out the top eight landing spots here).
While one of them will certainly be to rejoin the Thunder, he could finally be finished trying to win a championship with Oklahoma City after the past seven years of near-misses. Perhaps Donovan can already sense this in his star small forward.
Durant could already be gone in his own mind, despite saying he hasn’t even thought about free agency after losing Game 7 to the Golden State Warriors on Monday night.