OKC you later: Seattle celebrates Kevin Durant stiffing that other city

Dear Oklahoma City,

Sucks, doesn’t it?

Sincerely,
Seattle

What? You were expecting compassion after Kevin Durant’s decision to leave for Golden State?

Not in this lifetime. Not with this team. And certainly not with my level of pettiness when it comes to that city’s fans, who’ve spent the last eight years as the NBA equivalent of a silver-spooned child who’s born on third base yet believes he hit a triple.

Now, they get to find out how the other half lives in the NBA, a reality that Seattle was intimately familiar with in the 10 years prior to the franchise being hijacked by those frackers from Oklahoma City.

I thought there wasn’t anything I would enjoy more than watching the Oklahoma City Thunder blow a 3-1 lead over Golden State in the Western Conference Finals. I was wrong. This is way more satisfying because this is way more permanent. Durant is leaving Oklahoma City and taking the Thunder’s chances of winning an NBA title in the next 10 years with him. Hell, I’m not even a Sonics fan. I’ve cheered for the Warriors for almost 30 (mostly miserable) years, and I’m more happy that Durant is leaving Oklahoma City than I am about the fact he’s joining Golden State.

Seattle knows what it’s like to lose a player like that. In fact, Seattle knows what it’s like to lose that specific player. I won’t be so stupid as to infer that Durant left for a lack of fan support – something that plenty of Oklahoma City fans did and do when it comes to diagnosing Seattle’s loss of its NBA team. This was a decision that was more about a player’s desire than it was anything a fan base did or didn’t do.

But at least Seattle could console itself with the fact that when Durant left Seattle in 2008, it wasn’t his choice. He was forced to relocate along with the franchise, leaving behind the memory of the one season he played here. Seattle lost a custody battle over Durant in court. Oklahoma City, on the other hand, got dumped on a holiday with the Internet equivalent of a Dear John letter. It’s not you, said Durant, it’s him.

As if that’s going to take any of the sting out of it.

And it’s not going to get any better, either. Reality is about to take a big bite out of the NBA pipe dream that Oklahoma City has been living since 2008 when it landed a franchise with a ready-made superstar in Durant and freshly drafted Russell Westbrook, who only became the single most ferocious guard in the NBA. They were partners from the first day in town. Hell, the Thunder frittered away James Harden after reaching the NBA Finals four years ago and were still good enough to come within one victory of getting back there this past season.

That’s how good Durant is, and Seattle knew that back in 2007. This was a scorer the likes of which the league had never seen, a 6-foot-9 small forward with a soft shooting touch and unlimited range who also happened to be epically likable.

That was the final twist of the knife when Clay Bennett took the whole operation to Oklahoma. He was taking the guy who would have been the best player in franchise history with him. Not only did Seattle lose the Sonics – our city’s first pro sports franchise – but it lost that franchise after getting teased by the unmistakable whiff of greatness that was evident even in Durant’s rookie season.

Seattle had suffered through the Dark Ages of Calvin Booth and Jerome James and Olumide Freakin’ Oyedeji. The Sonics had drafted Robert Swift, Johan Petro and Mouhamed Sene in the first round in consecutive years.

And after all that, the Sonics had come out clean on the other side with that rarest of commodities in the NBA, a player capable of being the cornerstone of a championship operation.

Then he was gone.

Which is probably how Oklahoma City feels this morning. Only worse, and the truth is that it’s not going to get any better.

Seattle knows that first hand from what happened to the Sonics after Vin Baker returned from the lockout overweight and suffering from what we later learned was a serious drinking problem. Baker’s decline left Seattle with just one All-Star and a huge problem: it was high-centered in the NBA, never good enough to win more than a playoff series but not bad enough to draft a player capable of catapulting the team back into contention, which is exactly where Oklahoma City sits after Durant’s departure.

The Thunder are a one-star constellation until Westbrook leaves, which could happen any time in the next 12 months, at which point Seattle is going to revel in the schadenfreude all over again.

Welcome to Dumpsville, Oklahoma City. Population: you.

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