Warriors players and fans are still getting over the sting that came along with losing to the Cavaliers in the 2016 NBA Finals. Steph Curry has gone on the record and said that he’ll probably never get over the loss. But they can take comfort in this: If Golden State had won their second straight championship back in June, there’s a good chance that they wouldn’t have had the opportunity to sign Kevin Durant in July.
Durant, Andre Iguodala, Warriors general manager Bob Myers, and Warriors owner Joe Lacob helped Golden State accept a 2016 ENCORE award at the Stanford Graduate School of Business on Monday night, and during the event, KD was asked about whether or not he thinks he would have still signed with the Warriors if they had won in the NBA Finals last season. And while he shied away from saying that it would have been out of the question, he strongly hinted that he probably would have made a different decision if the Warriors would have won the championship. He also took reporters through the emotions he was feeling as he watched Game 7.
"[My agent] Rich [Kleiman], who’s here, we were watching Game 7," KD said, according to The Mercury News. "Well, as it started to unfold, it was, 'No question, no way could you go to this team.' And I was just like a kid, like, 'I’d really like playing with these guys. I’d get wide-open 3s, I could just run up and down the court, get wide-open layups.' I was basically begging him. I was like, 'Yo, this would be nice.' As they lost, it became more and more real every day. You start to think about it even more. To see if it would fit. Then once I sat down with these guys, everything that I wanted to know about them, they kinda showed me. But we don’t have to talk about [what would have happened if the Warriors had won the title], because they didn’t get the job done, and they came after me. I guess you could say I’m glad that they lost."
Over the years, KD’s 2016 free agency decision will probably morph into one of the biggest “What ifs” in NBA history. As in, what if the Warriors had won the 2016 NBA Finals? Would KD still have signed with them? Or better yet, what if the Thunder had knocked the Warriors out in the 2016 Western Conference Finals? Would KD have left OKC to sign with the historic team that he eliminated from the playoffs? It’s impossible to know, but it will be fun to debate those things as KD continues his career with the Warriors.
