Why Kevin Durant Should Choose That Team in The Pacific Northwest Over Any Other Team

By Jeff Shull

When Kevin Durant officially becomes a free agent this summer (after a likely exit courtesy of the Golden State Warriors), you can bet your bottom dollar all 30 NBA teams will at least make contact with his agent. However, there are only a few realistic possibilities for a player of Durant’s skill to choose from. Up until this point, you probably have heard most of them.

He should stay with the team that drafted him as they are already clearly a viable contender.

He should join forces with the Warriors who are the best team ever.

He should go to San Antonio and become a new “Big Three” with LaMarcus Aldridge and Kawhi Leonard.

He should join the Los Angeles Clippers to get a ring with CP3.

He should go join that other Los Angeles team and build something from scratch

He should go to Boston and join an up-and-coming team with an up-and-coming coach.

He should go home to Washington and build something with John Wall.

He should go to Houston and play with his best friend James Harden.

All of these options sound great and certainly have their advantages, but in my opinion there is one team that can offer Durant the chance to win a title while also not looking like he’s taking the easy way out. If he joined forces with the Spurs, Clippers or Warriors, he would likely get the LeBron James treatment. People will not only chastise him for leaving the team that drafted him and stood behind him, they will also likely apply any metaphorical asterisk to rings he does earn because he joined a team already competing for championships.

Despite the fact that James took less money than he could have earned in Cleveland, he never heard the end of creating a “super team” in Miami. I was not one of those people, but to each their own.

Any other option out there would not be as good as the team I believe he should go to. The Thunder have reached their peak, and don’t have a ton of options to get better with potentially two max contracts on the books. The Rockets are a joke (coming from a Rockets fan). The Lakers…LOL. Boston is terrific and I actually wouldn’t blame him for going there, but you’d have to both live in Boston (no thanks) and also deal with the expectations that come with playing for the Celtics. That town is used to winning, and will let you hear it if you don’t. Washington would be a terrific story, but how much does KD care about going home and winning a title?

Winning a title period takes precedent over where it actually happens, that’s why his best option would be the Portland Trail Blazers.

After watching the Blazers go to war with the Warriors for five games, I gained a ton of respect for that entire team. Despite the Warriors not being at full strength, they were favored in every game of that series. Portland had a halftime lead in the final four games but didn’t have enough firepower to close them out. The Warriors were better and deeper, and it showed.

It got me thinking how good they could be if Lillard had more help on offense. As good as he was in that series (31.8ppg, 7.6 apg), he was never going to be enough to take down the best regular season team of all time. Having said that, the role players really grew up in this series and they are all very young. They will continue to get better and even without Durant you could see the ceiling of this team growing before your eyes. They actually reminded me of the Warriors in some ways, before Steve Kerr came along and made them a juggernaut.

The Blazers would be an instant contender with Durant. They could space the floor with a lineup of Lillard/McCollum/Harkless/Aminu and Durant. They have a tough, young big who can run and pass better than most bigs in Plumlee. Not to mention, if things fall into place the Blazers could have upwards of $40 million in cap space, leaving them room to sign Durant and potentially one other starter. Harrison Barnes is a free agent this summer as well, and I can’t begin to explain how fun a starting lineup of Lillard/McCollum/Barnes/Durant/Plumlee would be to watch.

You can make the argument that staying with the Thunder would be better because they are better right now, and I would listen. Steven Adams and Enes Kanter shocked me with how well they played against the Spurs, but that’s a matchup they were able to exploit. Those two will get run out of the gym by the Warriors, and in the end he will have to choose a team that can best contend with the class of the Western Conference right now.

However, the biggest difference is one person — Russell Westbrook. Westbrook is an other-world talent who is one of the top five players in the NBA without a doubt. I’m not here to question his abilities nor say he will never win a championship. This is more about their dynamic and the fact that Westbrook is a shoot-first point guard. Kevin Durant is the best offensive player in the game right now. He should be on a team that defers to him in crucial moments every time, not one that can go stretches without letting him touch the ball.

Damian Lillard would be a much better teammate for Durant than Westbrook. He has always shown the willingness to get his teammates involved and has and will never be accused of being a me-first point guard. I would also argue that Lillard has barely begun to realize his potential. He could somehow be even better than he already is, making Portland that much more attractive of a destination.

Portland, despite not being a terrific free agent market historically, is a really cool town to live in. Yes, it’s not Los Angeles or Chicago, but neither is Oklahoma City and he’s gotten used to that town. Of course I just recently visited Portland and was in the city after they won Game 3, so I could be very biased. I also don’t think Durant cares about that stuff. He wants rings.

The culture the Blazers have created should be enough to attract any big-name free agent. Most people picked them to finish with 30 wins, yet they won a playoff series and took the defending champs to the brink in every game of a closer-than-it-looked five-game series. Some of the players have also gone on record talking about how this was the most fun they’d ever had in the NBA.

“Since I’ve been in the league, I haven’t been around a team that I’ve spent this much time around and had this much fun with from top to bottom,” Lillard said. “Even our rookies, we’ve got relationships with those guys like we’ve been knowing them. I don’t think that’s common around the league.”

He’s right. I hope Kevin Durant is listening, because that would be a fun team to watch.

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