If Durant wants to stay…
There’s a chance that Kevin Durant will move on after this season. But if Durant wants to stay, the Golden State Warriors would be making a huge mistake in letting him go.
The reasons are sorted. Some of them are on the court. Durant is still one of the NBA’s very best players and realistically, he’s almost impossible to replace.
The potential on-court drop that would come is especially relevant for a team moving into a new building next season. As Golden State has seen from two fellow Bay Area teams, there’s very clearly a right way and a wrong way to do that.
There are plenty of reasons that the Warriors should want to keep Durant for as long as they possibly can.
These are the five biggest.
He’s still got it
Through the first half of the season, Durant was shooting 50.5 percent from the field. That’s slightly down from last year, but not alarmingly so. For reference, that was Durant’s shooting percentage in his final year with the Oklahoma City Thunder. His three point shooting percentage (36.4) is more noticeably down. But as long as defenses have to respect him from distance — which they still do — Durant will be fine. On top of that, Durant is shooting 91.1 percent on free throws. If that stands, that would be a career high.
Additionally, Durant continues to produce at a high level. He’s averaging 28.4 points a game, which would be his highest since winning the MVP in 2014. Durant is also moving the ball well. He’s averaging 6.1 assists a night, which would easily be his career high.
If Durant was showing significant signs of slowing down, we’d see the logic in letting him go at the end of the season. But those signs just aren’t there.
Realistically, he’s impossible to replace
When any team is moving on from any player, the question immediately becomes, who replaces him? For a title contender, as Golden State is, the ideal replacement would make the team better. So, who would make the Warriors better than they are now?
New Orleans Pelicans star Anthony Davis could well leave the team soon. That’s intriguing, but also problematic. For starters, a number of teams would be interested in him. Additionally, New Orleans would have to trade him. To be blunt, if a team with multiple first round draft picks (ie: the Boston Celtics) wanted Davis, Golden State’s potential offer would fall well short. Other young stars like Giannis Antetokounmpo, Karl-Anthony Towns, and Joel Embiid would all be fun options. But their teams aren’t lining up to trade them — nor should they be.
The other option would be to build depth, replacing Durant with a number of good players. That’s an interesting thought, but NBA history says it’s always better to have a dollar bill than four quarters. Moving on from Durant only makes sense if it makes the team better. It’s theoretically possible for that to happen. But thinking about things realistically, it’s nearly impossible to imagine.
They still need him in the playoffs
In 2015, Golden State needed six games to defeat a Cleveland Cavaliers team that had LeBron James and little else. Kyrie Irving was hurt late in Game 1 of those Finals and Kevin Love missed the entire series. In 2016, after nearly losing to Durant and the Thunder in the Conference Finals, the Warriors lost to the Cavaliers in the NBA Finals, making a record-setting 73-9 regular season little more than a footnote.
Durant rolled into town the following season. In Year 1, Golden State went 16-1 en route to a championship. In Year 2, even with Curry missing some postseason games, the Warriors went 16-5 in a postseason capped off by sweeping the Cavs out of the Finals and LeBron out of Cleveland. Durant won the Finals MVP in both 2017 and 2018. It’s also worth noting that the current team is not nearly as deep as the pre-Durant teams of 2015 and 2016.
Golden State finished the first half at 27-14. Stephen Curry missed 11 games and the team went 5-6. With Curry in the lineup, the Warriors were 22-8. It’s easy to look at that and downplay Durant’s significance. But as great as he’s been during the regular season for Golden State, Durant’s greatest impact has come in the playoffs. Don’t expect that to change any time soon.
They want to open the new arena the right way
The San Francisco Giants opened what’s now known as Oracle Park in 2000. While the first World Series win wouldn’t come until 2010, San Francisco won at least 90 games in each of the first five years of the park’s existence, making three playoff appearances and a World Series. Even in subsequent down years, fans of the Giants have still seen this stadium as a place that really changed the fortunes of the franchise. While the park would be no less beautiful and the location would be just as ideal, it’s fair to wonder if that would be the case if the team regressed in the early years of the stadium.
The San Francisco 49ers reached the NFC Championship Game in each of the three years before opening Levi’s Stadium in 2014, reaching one Super Bowl. They went 8-8 in 2014, a season that was marred by a clash of egos between coach Jim Harbaugh and owner Jed York. Harbaugh was let go and in the four subsequent seasons, San Francisco has gone no better than 6-10. Fans of the team see Levi’s as a representative of the franchise’s downturn. There are logistical issues with Levi’s and those would exist even in the best of times. But the lack of team success has infinitely hurt its approval rating among the fans.
That’s relevant, of course, because the Warriors are set to open up a new arena, the Chase Center, for the 2019-20 season. If moving Durant led to a downturn in the team’s success (a highly realistic possibility), Golden State would risk having its fans associate its new arena in the same way that 49ers fans see Levi’s Stadium. The Giants are a much better example to follow.
Make the most out of the window
In the 1991 Eastern Conference Finals, the Chicago Bulls swept the Detroit Pistons, who had won three straight Eastern Conference titles and back-to-back NBA Championships. There was absolutely no doubt that Detroit was vanquished by a better team and that its run was over. And as strange as it sounds, that’s the kind of finish to a run that the Warriors should strive for.
Michael Jordan’s Bulls won six titles in eight years. But between Jordan’s two-year retirement after the first three-peat and his feud with the front office at the end, it’s realistic to think that Chicago missed out on at least two more championships. The same can be said about the Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant led Los Angeles Lakers. They won three in a row. But if those two could have put their egos aside, Los Angeles also could have won at least two more in addition to the two that Kobe added without Shaq in 2009 and 2010.
When this run is over, the Warriors don’t want to look back and wonder if more championships were possible. The Golden State fans sat through a lot of terrible basketball and are finally getting paid off with a dynasty. We’ve already gone over how hard (if not impossible) it would be to replace someone like Durant. If he wants to stay and the team is still winning, the Warriors owe it to their fans to push this run as far as it’ll go.
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