lol imagine calling a 6'3'' 30 year old worth like 90 million, with an absolutely amazing wife, who is loved by millions of people a beta from your keyboard because he isn't a massive ego driven douchecanoe who refused to share the spotlight with anyone because of his legacy.

This is exactly the type of character young athletes should look up to. Not these insane self centered stars who want everything to be about them.

Call it what it whatever you want to call it. Most guys wouldn't want to play with KD in that spot.

If you think that's a virtue then it's a virtue, I'm not really making a character judgement on it as much as it probably seems like. I'm just saying he gave up a big chunk of legacy equity and I don't think many of the other greats would.

Durant got what he gave up in that transaction.

Internet posters having opinions on how alpha/beta nba players are has always been the worst

Not every NBA player has the Kobe mentality. Some guys just wanna go along to get along and make a ton of $, have fun in their career, play in a nice city, play on a good team etc

If beta is too much of a trigger word for people then call it something else. It's not like I'm questioning who he is as a person or anything.

And I even said my entire premise is a bit unfair because even if Curry didn't want to play with KD, not like he could do anything to really stop it when literally every single other person in the organization besides Harrison Barnes would want it to happen.

the "Beta" curry is going to spend his entire career with the team that drafted him and bring 4-5 rings to golden state, meanwhile the "Alpha" lebron is going to have to switch to his fourth different team this summer (doesnt sound very alpha to me) because Kyrie didnt want to play with him, and the "Alpha" Westbrook was so alpha that he drove KD away and now has a < 5% chance of finishing his career with > 0 rings.

This.

2017 Warriors > 92 Bulls > 2016 Warriors, when all is said and done.

He 'drove KD away' is not what I got from KD's social media responses. I thought it was because he didn't like Donovan and him and Russ were the only two ballplayers on the team. KD couldn't win with those cats, remember?

i can remember in school there would always be people who when playing sports wanted to play best 3/5 vs worst 3/5.

if Lebron signs with GS for the minimum would that be super cool because he can win a ring and the team would be SICK ? i guess some people see it that way.

im the second best player in the league i'm taking less money to join a 73 win team so i can WIN.

it's not just about winning, it is how you win.

Like Rosie Perez's character in White Men Can't Jump said "sometimes when you win, you really lose."

I dunno I'm probably stupid but I feel in 6-10 years when the salt clears people will look back and talk about how amazing warriors front office was, how they built one of the best teams in the league with #7,#11,#35 draft picks and how amazing their environment was, how incredible it was that they were able to make it work with 4 superstars and no internal drama. How Curry revolutionized the 3point game.

I doubt in that time people will be still crying about KD and rigged and ruining basketball. People have a tendency to look at history with rose colored classes, less emotion, and more logic. I'm sure there is a ton of examples just in NBA history to draw from.

Who is disagreeing with this? Yeah, pretty much. And KD knew that too, that's a big reason he went to GS.

Yeah there will always be some "You joined the 73 win team that beat you" but whatever animus comes from that is offset by winning rings. Staying in OKC or going to another pretty good team and not winning would be worse for him.

i was like 9 when i saw that on cinemax and still remember those nipples.

"and sometimes when you lose, you really win, and sometimes when you win or lose, you actually tie, and sometimes when you tie, you actually win or lose. Winning or losing is all one organic mechanism, from which one extracts what one needs."

I only remember the line Woody says about putting his mouth where the money is...

So much this.

Durant didn't take the team from Curry. I would bet a large amount of money that Durant will leave the team before Curry. And I'm pretty sure the GS front office would choose to keep Curry rather than Durant if it had to choose.

The talk about Curry being 1A to LeBron diminished because (i) media fatigue set it in (media loves to push the 1A narrative for a year or two, but LeBron has always been the best player in the league by a fair margin.); (ii) imitators have diminished the uniqueness of Curry's style of play; and (iii) his MVP seasons were his healthiest seasons.

This too. The most likely scenario with Durant was no more MVPs, 3-4 more rings over the course of his career.

The most likely scenario without Durant was no more MVPs, 1-2 more rings over the course of his career.

I hate KD on the Warriors because it ruined something that I really enjoyed. I don't really care about alpha/beta/legacy or that stuff. Watching a high-level, high-stakes, competitive NBA series is one of my favorite leisure activities. Just going back to 16, GSW-OKC, GSW-CLE were AWESOME. It was so fun to watch (even as a fan of none of those teams).

I love watching the top guys dig deep and come up with heroic performances. I've loved watching LeBron over the years come up with huge games in big spots - win or lose. I loved watching Klay go off to keep GSW in that OKC series. I loved that CP3 G7 with a pulled hammy against the Spurs a few years back. Watching Dirk's run in 11 was fascinating. Think a team like those Mavs has even 1% title equity now?

All that great stuff is pretty much all gone now. We know, way ahead of time, that if GSW stays fairly healthy and engaged that they will win the title. It's not quite USA Olympic level but it does have shades of that. Sure we might struggle for a half against a good Spain team, but we're loaded and we'll win. It's fun to watch as a novelty to see how guys interact, but it's not good sports.

We were teed up for an absolute golden age of high-level, late-round series with GSW, OKC, SAS, and whoever LeBron plays for (plus a couple of fringe teams with the potential to push these guys). Sports are entertainment. And that is a big piece of entertainment that disappeared when KD when to GS.

Add OKC - SA to that '16 list. They just had their best regular season achievement in team history.

I wasn't rooting for KD to sign with the Warriors. To me, Warriors v. OKC with Durant was the most entertaining matchup in the NBA.

Best thing I've seen for a while...

Been wondering about this though. I'm an OKC fanboy (fml) so I'm obviously biased and my opinion doesn't count here, but how long will it take for people (average Joe / media / people at TZ) to disregard the move he pulled and just look at it as 'rings'?
Back when he jumped ship, I remember people saying that all that matters in the end are titles and we wouldn't be talking about it anymore once he shipped his first ring.

We're close to him shipping his second and it's still something being brought up very frequently. Is there precedent in all of modern sports to compare this with? Is it different now that there are so many more different (social) media outlets and everyone keeps voicing opinions on it to keep the notion alive or will people have forgotten all about it in 3 seasons?

It won’t be forgotten quickly with what he did. I think his legacy may have an asterisk to some. With that being said, if I’m him do I risk the chance of 0 rings which would put him in the Barkley/Malone tier or take a shoe-in and get rings. I go with RANGZ.

With that being said, I think what he did is unpresidented in sports or at least the sports I follow. The only thing I think of that’s similar are much riskier moves where guys like Eli, Kobe forced their way to a team essentially as a draft pick. But I don’t think there is a case where a dynasty level team some how added the second best player in the league and ruined one of their biggest competitors.

When Kareem forced himself to the lakers for instance, he went to a crap team in the lakers and left the bucks who kind of sucked despite Kareem’s play the last year he was there but had been a team that was pretty elite for a few years before that. They weirdly won the same amount of games, 38, the year after Kareem left. He did miss some games with injury his last year in Milwaukee.

To me it would be like, lebron joining the Celtics big 4 or the spurs/lakers in the 2007-2013 span or if messi or Ronaldo joined the Barca with Messi or if MJ joined the Celtics, pistons or lakers in the 80s.

These projections both seem a bit rosy to me by about 1 ring each. Basketball may have less randomness than most sports, but injuries, new super teams forming, and an inability to keep everyone together are all reasonably likely to happen, and it only really takes 1 of those happening to submarine the chances of at least one ring. Everyone is acting like GS getting a ring this season is ordained from on high and just handed to them, but injuries that took away HCA, an untimely injury in the WCF, and an extremely capable competing super team all came together to have them on the ropes.

Last offseason, everyone thought the WC teams would just tank and amass assets to compete in a couple-few years when GS was no longer able to keep everyone together. Instead we saw contenders go out and get some star power to compete immediately. It almost worked for one of them! If your takeaway from a seven game competitive WCF that crushed it in the ratings is that the Warriors are both unbeatable and unwatchable in their current form, lol.

7 days ago we were talking about how KD ruined the warriors with his ISO ball, now we are back to taking about how he ruined the league