Kevin Durant “slander KD” hashtag card on social media after the Suns owner Mat Ishbia went on CNBC and said “bringing in super talented players like Kevin Durant does not necessarily lead to a championship.” We’ll give some context to Ishbia’s comments, but Durant took the offense in his head and, predictably, fired back at Ishbia.
And so this exchange followed;
Durant: #blameKD even though KD stayed in his game over 36 and you love this “culture” so much. Aye, Matthew like I got arrested for DUI or something. To those related
Ishbia: You obviously didn’t watch the clip. Not blaming you @Kdtrey5 but I’m happy with the humanity we’re building here in Phoenix. Now the guys have got the right focus and are excited for this season. … Good bye this season in Houston.
Durant: U should give thanks every chance u get. You don’t have to pay me absurd money to play for other teams.
So let’s address this comment one at a time, starting with Ishbia’s original response, in its entirety, when he was asked on CNBC what, with the benefit of hindsight, he had learned from his Durant trade two days after the team’s purchase became official in February of 2013.
Ishbia full comment
“I think the team was the [No.] 8 or 9 seeds [in the Western Conference] when I bought the team, Ishbia said, “we had some good young players and [the question was]: Can we get over the top? I basically said: Hey, sir, stay away from her. Give them money. And that’s why I said: Hey, listen to us, go pay tribute to luxury, go do whatever it takes to try to win patronage.
“So we did this,” continued Ishbia. “But it was more by going and getting Kevin Durant. That … a good player did a lot of great things, he won two championships before, but with my vision it was not a casino. We had two years and it didn’t work, as we are well known in this part.
“I decided after this year” [to] Kevin Durant trade, bring in my [own] The GM (Brian Gregory replaced James Jones), the new coach (Jordan Ott replaced Mike Budenholzer, who replaced Frank Vogel), and he personally got involved with the type of guy and the type of person we want in the organization, not just on the court, but off the court.
“I’m not saying [that type of person is] Kevin Durant or not Kevin Durant, but here’s what I’ll say: Dillon is Brooks. It’s Jordan Goodwin. It’s Collin Gillespie. Of course, Devin Booker. I will not name all my players, but we have defined what concerns us. We have things called DNA. He’s the type of player that we believe in, that we want, and he’s a pain that the fans will be proud of.
“Everybody thought we were the worst team in the league last year. We made plays. We won 45 games. We are builders in that. So what I learned, my biggest lesson … is not positive or negative about Kevin Durant. We define what we are in Phoenix, and then we stick with it. And I believe in our vision and our way. And I didn’t. I didn’t do it in our vision and way.
” [as an organization]Ishbia concluded.
Does Ishbia have a point?
Of course he does. In fact, it may not even be “necessary”. Unless, of course, we’re talking about the Warriors (who had Stephen Curry, and by extension the kind of championship culture foundation that Ishbia refers to, and therefore an exception to this rule) in Durant. definitively not led to patronage, or frankly contending for the patronage of an honest man. Not net. You don’t usually. Unfortunately, the developer is not a developer.
They don’t dig Durant for what it sounds like. In NBA history, there are very few examples of a team without a reigning superstar winning a ring at the hands of a mercenary. The 2016 Cavaliers and 2020 Lakers did it with LeBron James, who’s the exception to the ultimate rule. He wins everywhere he goes. In ch.
Other than that, you’ll find Kawhi Leonard in Toronto, Jalen Brunson in New York, and Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen with the 2008 Celtics as just examples of this century. It’s just not often that a hired superstar parachutes into an organization and delivers a title, certainly not immediately. Brunson worked four years and moved a significant roster around to become with the Knicks.
Because it is Ishbia. Basically you need an established culture with the right support system, from the role of the players to the coaches and the front office, in the first place. Doing it the other way around is like trying to build a skyscraper on a crap foundation, and we’ve seen such structures fail time and time again. James Harden since, well, every team that has ever gone after Houston, including Durant in net, is a perfect example.
All in all, when Ishbia says “bringing in super-productive players like Kevin Durant doesn’t necessarily lead to championships,” he’s telling the truth. It’s convenient enough, now we all know how it turned out, that he says he never wanted to make the trip in the first place, but he still admits that he’s a traveler on the Proin Soles effort as an overnight fantasy team.
You can’t do that these days. Especially when the road is narrowed down the expensive front of the building. It’s because we don’t see teams helping their rosters — as they’re used to offloading the likes of Mikal Bridges, Cam Johnson, Chris Paul, Jae Crowder and Deandre Ayton from their 2021 Finals team — just to serve their superstars anymore.
All Ishbia has learned from his mistakes is how important depth, coaching and culture are to the pursuit of a championship, and even an all-time talent like Durant is not enough to overcome the absence of those elements.
Does Durant even have a point?
Not really here. It is true that he remained “on top of his game at 36” and in two and a half seasons with the Sun he was exceptionally spectacular, as he has been throughout his career, but Ishbia never took on his role. In fact, he never really attacked Durant personally at all, although you can understand the Hall of Famer’s offense at painting himself as a player with less “sunshine DNA,” which is a sign of winning DNA, than Brooks and Gillespie.
But the bottom line is that when guys like Brooks and Gillespie play their ass off every night, the team is better without Durant than they were with him the year before when they won 36 games and dropped games.
Frankly, it’s almost a joke that Durant could tell with a straight face that Ishbia and the Suns brought back the culture. In the two and a half seasons before Durant arrived, the Suns model franchise that had made the Finals was finished as the West’s No. 1 and No. 2 seeds in consecutive seasons, and won almost 70% of their regular season games. In the two and a half years with Durant, they lost almost half of their playing time, and in the two full seasons they had him, they rolled around first and stopped playing altogether.
That is not to say what Durant’s fault was, at least in the sense that he was singularly always excellent on the court. Rational minds can disagree about the additive potential of Durant’s particular basketball style (it’s a question of how much he elevates those around him), but never his production. It’s just impossible to compete for championships without having all of your standard I’s dotted and T’s crossed.
This is the lesson Ishbia learned. You can’t overcome that by “throwing money” at your problems. It probably applies more to the Bradley Beal disaster than the Durant trade, but the general point is the same. You have to fix these issues from the inside out, and the simple truth is that Durant has been struggling from the outside trying to save teams that have been dying since he left Golden State. Almost no one succeeds in that mission. Not one of the 10-15 greatest players to ever live, as many, including myself, believe Durant to be.