Durant FINALLY Breaks Silence on OKC Thunder…

Durant FINALLY Breaks Silence on OKC Thunder…

Kevin Durant has finally broken his silence on the OKC Thunder, hopping on the Mind the Game podcast as a guest star with fellow former MVPs LeBron James and Steve Nash. He made some remarks that will leave fans thunder struck. But before we get into exactly what Mr. 35 had to say on the mic, as well as the context surrounding these situations that he decided to talk about and bring up, we first need to establish that this is the most polarizing figure in OKC franchise history. a top three player with the franchise. A guy who won an MVP, four scoring titles, and put the city on the map, but realistically did not get the job done in his time there. Sometimes at fault of his own, sometimes at fault of others, something else we’re going to talk about before leaving in the softest move in pro sports history. Currently, this guy is heading into his fifth team next season. has two rings that no one cares about counts or respects and he was just traded for Jaylen Green and enough second round picks to fill up a small country. We know why this is because this guy is not a proven winner and he proved it in OKC orange today and he had a lot of different things to say on this podcast. Before we get into it though, Gabriel Everil here with Thunder Digest where we are just a few subs away from our goal of 6K. We’re trying to keep you guys up to date with all things OKC this off seasonason, including free agency, signings, trades, hopefully no more injuries, but all your OKC news here in one place. If you’re one of the 33% subscribed to the channel, thank you for rocking with us. And if not, make sure you change that. Without any further ado, let’s get into what Mr. Durant had to say on the podcast that came out very recently talking about Kevin Durant joining two of the best basketball minds to ever play the game. LeBron James and Steve Nash. All three of them won MVPs. All three of them have had very very different careers and we are going to be talking about what was said when they all came together in one room and just started bouncing some ideas off of each other for a few hours. Kevin Durant in particular, uh, guy of interest to, uh, us OKC fans, of course, had something to say about the team and their championship. Naturally, that segueed into his time with the team and their championship window where the very first interesting thing was said. We’re taking a look at Kevin Durant saying, “I think we exceeded expectations with that team. And when you reach the finals and you go through a run like that so quick, I don’t think a GM or owner was ready for that. you sped up the timeline on all of us, each individual player. My theory is they weren’t exactly ready for us to be contenders every year. That is the first big bombshell that KD drops in this podcast. And the thing is, if you look at things surrounding it, there is stuff that points to this being true, right? Westbrook and Harden, 23 years old a piece when this team appeared in the finals. Harden was due for a contract uh at the end of that year 2012 and he believed he was a max level player. When you take a look at the stats that Harden put up right in this uh run, you’re looking at a guy who coming in the three years of regular season, he only started seven games. He was playing about an average of 27 minutes a night, averaging at this point at 17 points in his career, three and a half rebounds and four assists. So like a guy who yes he was a very impactful player but and he just won six man of the year. So people were recognizing that he was one of the best most promising young players in the league but a lot of him deserving the max came off of the team role that he had and the success that he had. Not his raw numbers. He was a more efficient player at this point in his career. He shot 50% from the field and 39% from three. That those numbers did not hold up in Houston. He got to the line a lot more in his time in Houston and put up more shots. Um, but when you look at Harden’s final stats, right, the big uh, black line in the top 33 minutes he played, that’s significant amount of time that Harden played in the finals. And he played bad, man. He averaged 12 and a half points, four, five rebounds, three and a half assists, and he shot 37% from the field, 32% from the three. So, if you want to argue that James Harden’s timeline got sped up based on the finals, him getting a max contract was based off of the deep playoff run they had, this isn’t a terrible argument by KD, especially when you look at the playoff run they went through to get there, right? This was a team that beat Dirks Mavericks in the first round before beating Kobe Lakers in six to get to the Western Conference Finals there. They upset the dynastic San Antonio Spurs in seven to make the finals and represent the Western Conference. This was a Spurs team that would later on make the finals three more times, win two more of them. Uh, and they played the heat competitively each time. This was a team with Tim Duncan still in his prime at this point and they were definitely the favorites over the OKC Thunder by winning that series and making it to the finals. It did speed up Harden’s timeline specifically because that was the year he was due for a contract. And we saw that we didn’t want to pay the luxury tax. If we had offered him a max, it would be six million over the cap limit and we’d have to pay into that. So, if you wanted to argue that it did speed up in that regard the organization, I don’t disagree. Especially when you take a look at Russell Westbrook stats though, he was ready for this situation. This was a guy who coming in was a consistent starter, was consistently getting better each year. Look at his scoring numbers going up from 15 to 16 to 22 to 24 almost. And then yeah, his assists dropped in this specific season, but he had averaged eight assists the two seasons before and he had a good finals. He averaged 27 points, 6 and a half rebounds, six and a half assists. He had a 40 ball, I think, in game three is what it was. And yeah, he didn’t shoot a great percentage, uh, especially from three, but Russell Westbrook really wasn’t a three-point shirt, especially that point in his career. And he was doing everything you could ask of a 23-year-old young guard on the biggest stage in basketball. Plus, he was constantly improving. And that’s why Russell Westbrook stayed around and was the second uh gun for most of KD’s time there before they kind of started clashing heads when Westbrook kept excelling to the level where him and Durant were almost identical. And then you saw the split happen at the end of that run. But when you talk about speeding up the timeline, Kevin Durant is kind of right by upsetting uh the Western Conference that year and making it all the way to the finals. James Harden demanding the max is what did speed up that time on that specific team. This is something that you could take as facts. But the next thing that you have to look at is Kevin Durant also did hold up his and in the finals. This was a guy who averaged 30 and a half points, six uh rebounds, which is kind of low uh and only a pair of assists, but he shot very efficiently. 55% from the field, 40% from three, just under. And he got to the line and he hit free throws in 84% clip. So, this was a guy 65 true shooting percentage. He had a good a good finals display. This was right around the time he was stepping into second best player in the world combos uh against LeBron. And he was still very young at the time as well. Kevin Durant held up his own in the finals and it wasn’t his fault that they lost in five and didn’t win a ring in this scenario. That is something that also needs to be highlighted going forward because when Kevin Durant talks about why the Thunder didn’t win a championship, you need to also take into account the rest of his time thereafter that. Yes, maybe they didn’t get the job done in 2011 12 because they were too young, because it was too early. And there is everything that I just showed you does point to that. However, when you’re talking about big picture time with OKC, why it ended, if they won a ring in, I don’t know, 2016 when they should have won a ring, then they then he obviously would not have left the team, especially in the fashion he did to go to the team that he did, right? Because when you take a look at what Kevin Durant did and finished at, you saw Harden, this team he was talking about, OKC never went on to make another NBA Finals run. Harden was traded in 2012 and KD left in 2016. Now, we saw that happen. And why is that? When you take a look at the Western Conference Files in 2016, Kevin Durant played bad by his standards and almost really any standards that you would consider a superstar for this series. When you look at the raw numbers, 30 points per game, eight rebounds, sure, that’s f that’s great and dandy, right? Looking at this these shots, there was four three games in which he took 30 field goals and none of them did he make above 12. He hit 10 field goals in like between 10 and 12 field goals in six of these seven games while taking a lot a lot of the shot volume in these things. And he was taking touches away from Russell Westbrook. And this is why people thought that duo was never going to get it done. But in reality, it came down to KD not holding up his end of the bargain in the Western Conference Finals. Not to mention, you were up 3-1 in this series before you gave away all the momentum in games five and six by shooting 12 of 31 and 10 of 31. Two awful games in a row. I never thought I would say someone had an awful 40 ball until you see KD shooting 38%. And he just is taking his teammates out of a rhythm. He was never a great distributor, never a great playmaker on the Oklahoma City Thunder. That only improved when he got into the spacing of the Golden State Warriors and then he became slightly better as his careers progressed and he had to become a more willing passer as he couldn’t take on as heavy of a scoring load. But with his time at OKC, he was not a playmaker and he was taking shots and touches away that Westbrook could have had in these Western Conference Finals. And that is the reason they lost. Especially when you look at games five and six when you had chances to seal it and kill the 73 win team and put them dead in the dirt. He did not do it. He did not step on their necks and he was the reason they did not make it to the finals and have a crack at winning a ring that year that I believe they would have won against the Cavs. Yeah, the Cavs ended up coming back on the Warriors. But I believe OKC was a better team than the Cavs that year. Uh in a vacuum, we’re not doing like basketball math where oh well they came back 3-1 and we got come back against 3-1. I’m talking in a vacuum. Thunder versus Cavs. I think we had a pretty good shot at winning that series, but we didn’t get there. We don’t know because of Kevin Durant. Kevin Durant is the reason we lost in 2016. Yeah, he might be correct that we sped up the timeline in 2012 by making the finals, especially in not being able to uh retain James Harden. That is true. However, that is not the reason you did not win a championship in Oklahoma City. At the end of the day, you had a good enough team around you this year and you played yourself out of another finals appearance and another crack at it with these games. When you look at the raw scoring numbers, you might think, “Okay, yeah, he didn’t have a bad series averaging 30.” But man, I remember watching these games. I was in sixth grade. I watched game seven on a bus ride home from a field trip to an amusement park and I was crying. That’s how sad this That’s how sad this was. Is this was a tragic tragic end to his career and then to leave in the fashion that he did. Obviously, we don’t even need to speak the words on how bad that was. And I also cried that time too. But nonetheless, this was a guy who played the almost the full games in many of these games had many of the touches on offense and many of times he didn’t deliver and that’s why he couldn’t get the job done in OKC in the long run. Yes, he played up to standard in 2011 12 the team wasn’t ready. That is true. That does not take away from the fact that you had a chance to deliver a championship to the city for years after that and you could not get the job done. That’s just what I had to say on the scenario uh on the Mind the Game podcast that I saw and I just had to get that off my chest looking at this interview. Kevin Durant is a top three player in Fran OKC franchise history. I have him at three personally, but nonetheless, he did not get the job done, the grand job that we had set out to do, that every team sets out to do every season. And at the end of the day, he can’t blame anybody else for that in the grand scheme of his time there. maybe for that one season. Yes, I will agree the timeline wasn’t ready. They won too early and that had contributed into not retaining Harden, but to also say that you didn’t have a chance to win there is kind of ludicrous. You had uh Russell Westbrook around you who was playing he had a great uh Western Conference Files game one, he was dominant in game one. Uh for one thing, I I I still sometimes will go back and watch that game. But nonetheless, Kevin Durant did not get the job done in Oklahoma City, and he can’t put that blame onto anybody else, regardless of one season. This has been Gabriel Eversil with Thunder Digest. I’ll catch you guys in the next one. Make sure to sub up.

Thunder Digest covers the latest reports, news and rumors regarding the Oklahoma City Thunder. If you want to stay updated with every trade, move and tidbit on players like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Chet Holmgren, Jalen Williams, Lu Dort, Alex Caruso, Isaiah Hartenstein, Cason Wallace, Isaiah Joe, Aaron Wiggins, Mark Daigneault and Sam Presti.