By Garth Shanklin
Sports Editor

Like many people, I spent last Monday’s Fourth of July holiday with family. We did the usual summer things like swimming and playing basketball, which for the most part required me to be away from my phone for most of Monday morning. Just before noon, as we were wrapping up our activities and preparing to go home, I felt it.

To partially quote Obi-Wan Kenobi of Star Wars fame, “I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror.” Those voices were all metaphorically reacting to the same thing: the Players’ Tribune article Kevin Durant wrote announcing his free-agent plans to join the Golden State Warriors.

Now, before I start laying out my beliefs as to why nobody should care that someone decided to leave Oklahoma for a more successful job in California, there is one point I need to make: I don’t watch pro basketball.

Never have. Probably never will, unless Cincinnati steals the Kings back from Sacramento. Until that happens, I’ll keep the long-lost Cincinnati Royals in my heart and the NBA off my television.

It’s not that I hate the NBA, as I’m sure some people do. I’ve heard it described as a farce, where the players just dribble around for a bit before taking seven thousand steps and slamming the ball into the basket. That doesn’t seem like something that actually happens, though I’m sure there are some players who can get away with a few more steps than the rulebook allows.

No, I just never really got into the NBA. During the most important part of my growth as a sports fan, we didn’t have cable at my house. I would be able to listen to the Cincinnati Reds on the radio, same with the Bearcats and the Bengals. I even listened to UC basketball on the radio, but the Bearcats were rebuilding after Bob Huggins was unceremoniously tossed out, and they weren’t very good.

As such, few Bearcats landed on the NBA radar, and because of that the NBA didn’t leave a blip on mine. The ones who did eventually make it to the pros, like Kenyon Martin and Jason Maxiell, were too early for my time. I remember watching Martin’s injury on television live and it affects me now more than it did when it actually happened, though that may be because I was six at the time.

Now, things are a bit different. I follow Sean Kilpatrick’s career in the league, which seems to finally be working out for him. However, I don’t have a team affiliation.

A lot of people felt like the entire state of Ohio should rally behind Cleveland because the Cavs are the only NBA team in the state. That’s ridiculous, and would result in thousands of bandwagon fans only supporting the team when it wins and returning to “same old Cleveland” when it doesn’t. Would the entire state rally around the Blue Jackets, the only NHL team, or the Columbus Crew, the only MLS team? Of course not.

That said, this column isn’t about my fandom, it’s about one man’s decision to take a better job. That’s all the debate has to be about. You can complain that he left one good team for the team that beat him, and that’s perfectly valid. He did leave the Thunder, a team with championships within grasp, for the Golden State Warriors, a team that won the most games in NBA history last year.

So what? People leave jobs all the time. In the strictest sense, all Durant ended up doing is deciding he’d like to work in an arguably better area that gives him the best shot to reach his career goals. He’s tried to take the Thunder to that level and came very close to doing so. If he stuck it out for a few more years, could he eventually maybe win a championship? Sure.

Or, instead of hoping the front office is able to put together a team around him that can win, he could go to a team that already has a winning formula and become a piece in the puzzle instead of roughly one-third of it.

It’s a promotion, earned from hard work. Nobody complained in Kansas City when Johnny Cueto left for San Francisco. The Royals acquired him to win a World Series, and he did just that. There was no way Cueto was going to win one with the Reds, so the team sent him somewhere where he’d have a shot to win games and they’d get something for him in return.
Durant didn’t win his championship in Oklahoma City. He took it upon himself to do what the Reds did for Cueto: go somewhere to play with the best chance of winning.

So sure, Durant’s a traitor. Oklahoma City would know a lot about deceit, given how the franchise came to be in the first place. By no means is that the fault of the fans of the Thunder, it’s not like they actively stole the team from Seattle. But when that same kind of feeling happens, and you’re on the wrong end of it, it’s not pretty. It’s not fun, especially if your mind is focused purely on the abandonment from one of your favorite players and one of the best players in the game leaving your city for somewhere else.

Don’t think of it that way. Think of it as someone who gave back to the community for years finally earning a chance to reach the pinnacle of his profession. Think of it as a promotion for Durant, with a chance for him to grow on the court and off it, because let’s face it, if given the same choice, many of us would be packing for California as we speak.