These Playoffs Were The Hardest Road

I'm not mad at Kevin Durant, I'm happy that another player has lifted the unfair "YEAH BUT, WHERE ARE YOUR RINGS?" debate off of his shoulders. I am extremely upset for the remaining 29 teams in the NBA that have virtually no present or near-future opportunity at winning a championship (or in the western conference's case, reaching a Finals) without MULTIPLE great players falling to a catastrophic injury. What chance does a team like the Utah Jazz, a team has done everything right from a developmental standpoint, have when they reside in the barren wasteland that is Utah? The Jazz are especially out of luck when you consider that they are about to lose their strongest all-around player (Gordon Heyward) to another SUPERDUPERTEAM destination like Miami or Boston, who have had recent runs of success based on unproven teams created via multiple sly acquisitions.

Rings culture has killed the NBA's casual, non-contending teams' fans, when all people everywhere do is add unnecessary pressure to the all-time greats by pointing out a players' championships won. Wilt Chamberlain only gets downgraded in everybody's all-time rankings for playing at the same time as Bill Russell and a homegrown superteam like the 1960s Boston Celtics. Charles Barkley only gets downgraded for playing at the same time as all-time greats like Kareem, Magic and Michael Jordan. Steve Nash and Allen Iverson will never get the respect they deserve because they had to play against the Kobe Bryants, Tim Duncans and Shaquille O'Neals of the world. Sure, there were some fun and unique champions along the way in the seventies, with the early-90s and '04 Pistons and even the 2011 Dallas Mavericks but for the most part, the league has always seen the best player in the league at any given time in the Finals. Kevin Durant was about to become another one of those "YEAH BUT..." players until he joined Golden State and took down the latest GOAT, Lebron James.

If we didn't have these barber shop-type hot take-laden debate shows that mindlessly continue the rings culture, the league might not be looking ahead at the next 4-5 years of utter hopelessness spread countrywide. Kevin Durant has been consistent in his reasoning for signing with the Golden State Warriors, he enjoys the way they play. That's really just a not-so-well-disguised way of saying "they're winners, they went 73-9, OKC, Miami and Boston did not go 73-9 last year and dammit, I want to win and have fun doing so". Again, I will not fault Durant for ruining the competitive balance of the NBA in a way that has never been done before. The only reason outside of that desire to win pointless barber shop arguments that KD to GS became a thing was because of the ridiculous cap spike in 2016 that rightfully rewarded the players while simultaneously and unexpectedly taking away from fans' enjoyment because of one transaction. There is no easy or sudden fix to this problem (and it will be a problem numbers-wise beginning next season) when Durant has openly suggested he would take a pay cut to stay when Draymond Green and Klay Thompson's contracts are up after next season.

AP
Kevin Durant's "hardest road" quote is his version of "taking my talents to South Beach" in it's lack of self-awareness.

The Golden State Warriors would have won last year's NBA Finals in five games had Draymond Green been kinder to his fellow man's testicular area and instead, they only won in five games this year because the Cleveland Cavaliers had the greatest offensive half of basketball in NBA history. I'm beginning to think this was Draymond's plan all along. Thus concludes my Finals recap.

So long and farewell to my least favorite postseason I have ever had the displeasure of watching as Russell Westbrook and James Harden proved just how meaningless the regular season is, Zaza Pachulia may have purposely injured a robot to kill a series and the NBA ruined it's own product for a few years thanks to a sudden spike in money available to teams (including one 73-9 team) for immediate spending, thus rendering the postseason just as meaningless for a couple of years. At the end of the day, we are all at fault for the greatest team in NBA history.