Why I Am Hating On Kevin Durant 6

Kevin Durant joining the Golden State Warriors and subsequently winning a Championship bothered me. A lot. If you’re one of those simple people who thinks proclaiming two syllables of mom slang can parachute you out of a discussion, you will say to me,

You’re just being a Hater.

And then your face bill go blank as you start thinking about cheese, you’ll consider the case closed, as if you’ve just invalidated my opinion with a rubber stamp cliche. Realize you sound like a complete and utter tool when you call someone a Hater.

Once you start sharing a lexicon with the hosts of The View, in any form whatsoever, it’s time to up your game. You might as well bust out your LL Cool J CD and tell me it’s Da Bomb.

It is indeed interesting that, with all of the casual racism of the Republican party, how these assertive PTA moms seem to seamlessly incorporate hip hop slang into their vocabs after a brief ten to fifteen year test market period.

Perhaps by the time Van Nuys is underwater they’ll realize their world view actually has actually lead to the oppression of blacks, who in turn created hip hop as a form of pushing back against these very same people.

Did Todd from next door just get a fucking Wu Tang tattoo?

Yes, I hate the fact that Kevin Durant joined the Golden State Warriors. I think it’s a complete and utter pussy move. I hate a lot of things. I hate that Donald Trump is the president of the United States. I hate that people can bring their dogs onto airplanes. I hate that the cable companies are merging. I hate that Volkswagen will be allowed to continue functioning as a company after installing computer programming in their vehicles to falsify their emissions. I hate that nobody from Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citibank, Fanny Mae, Freddie Mac, or ENRON has ever served a day in jail for purposefully stealing money from American citizens. I hate the fact that we pay police officers to issue us frivolous speeding tickets. I hate the fact that the same media conglomerates who own record labels also own TV stations and we have to watch Justin Bieber’s janky twink ass host Saturday Night Live. And I hate when people say the music which his name is attached to is “Not that bad.” I hate a lot of things. Including Kevin Durant winning an NBA Championship. I hate the military industrial complex. I hate that Turkey hasn’t acknowledged the goddamn Armenian Genocide. I guess that makes me a Hater, bearded hipster air quotes or not.

The first thing some uninspired undecided voter type will say when I explain that I am irritated by Kevin Durant winning an NBA Championship is,

He had the right to go wherever he wanted.

Yeah, everyone knows that, dork. Nobody’s saying otherwise. Is this a pathetic attempt at coming off as progressive? Kevin Durant has the right to wear a red Make America Great Again cap to and from each game. Kevin Durant has the right to purchase eighteen dollars worth of McDonald’s and sit in his car laughing to himself and taunting a homeless guy as he eats. Kevin Durant has the right to purposefully knock over a huge display of wine at Whole Foods and say it was an accident because he gets a thrill out of watching someone clean it up. Kevin Durant has the right to do all kinds of things. Some of these things would make him a total douchebag. Joining the Golden State Warriors is, in my opinion, one of those things, and that is why it irritates me.

The next response is typically to equate Kevin Durant joining the Warriors to other star players leaving their teams to join more stacked squads, the most typical comparison being LeBron James leaving Cleveland to team up with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh with the Miami Heat.

But that was way different.

In the season previous to James joining the team, the Miami Heat had won 47 games. The season before Kevin Durant joined the Warriors they won 73, which is the most in the history of the league. LeBron James also had no significant history or rivalry playing against the Miami Heat. The team LeBron joined hadn’t knocked his team out of the playoffs the previous season, which is exactly the case with Kevin Durant.

His Oklahoma City Thunder were up 3 games to 1 against the same Golden State Warriors team in the Western Conference Finals the previous season, plus or minus a few bench players. Durant and his team choked and lost the series. Instead of trying to beat them next season, Durant simply joined their team.

His decision appeared to contradict every traditional notion regarding the nature of competition. On any playground, in any pickup game, when a team loses the programmed reaction of any player is to Run it Back!

Most any competitor’s natural instinct is to want to beat the team that just beat you. Even in a rudimentary pickup game, expressing a desire to join a team which just beat you would see you pelted with various insults, at the very least.

As the media narrative constantly reinforced in these Finals, the Golden State Warriors were highly motivated to beat the Cleveland Cavaliers because the Cleveland Cavaliers beat them last year.

That’s how competition has worked, basket for basket, point for point, touchdown for touchdown, since time immemorial.

Except in the case of Kevin Durant.

Kevin Durant is apparently not a huge of competition. He wants the trophy with the least possible amount of work.

 

I hate Kevin Duran’t decision because he took the easy way out. It was a real Bitch Move, as your sorority sister might say of cutting in line at the Chuck E Cheese around ten years from now.

It’s not that Kevin Durant left. Going to another team would have been completely understandable. Nobody’s complaining about that. It’s that he left the team that beat him, and that has never happened with an MVP caliber player in any sport, because athletes who attain such elite status usually have a psychotic amount of pride and would sooner quit than jump on a bandwagon.

Durant’s was the ultimate beta-male maneuver. Scandalous in a way. The type of thing that happens on Survivor.

Perhaps that’s why Kevin Durant was snickering like an entitled prick as LeBron James was no doubt giving him a variation of exactly what I’m saying here in games 4 and 5 of the Finals. His pencil necked nervous snickering in response reminded me of a George W Bush press conference. Beneath the outward display of confidence you could sense the deep down embarrassment.

But Durant was now the establishment. The big banks. Too big to fail. Unbeatable. There’s nothing you can do about it, that’s where the arrogance comes in.

In joining the Warriors, Durant completely cheapened what it means to win a Championship, stripping away much of the accomplishment, rendering it a veritable gold star you get for attendance in grammar school.

This unprecedented decision seems to be a product of a few damning cultural trends.

Firstly, the aforementioned participation ribbon culture many millennials such as Durant were raised on. Taking short cuts. Wanting the accolades without wanting to put in the work. I want to be famous, I just don’t have any talent. Well then, we’ll simply inject your ass cheeks with silicon and take video of you shopping. Is your ultra privileged kid kind of dull? Simply put him or her into an artsy alternative school that doesn’t give out grades. Want to rock out on a guitar? Here’s Guitar Hero, you need to memorize some basic button pushing patterns. Want to pat yourself on the back for participating in a charitable cause? Buy these sustainable sourced socks and they’ll give a pair to some poor sockless person, no need to get your boots dirty.

Secondly, there’s this prevailing notion that silencing the haters should be one’s ultimate goal in life, as opposed to not being known for being hatable. This is the motto that someone like Donald Trump, for example, lives by. You can point out the various flaws in his character, like that he obviously has micro-penis syndrome, and he will simply fire back that you’re jealous because he is more successful than you are in the eyes of much of society.

You can call Kim Kardashian a herpes ridden whore, and she’ll respond the same way. And all of the empty headed people who, out of insecurity and envy, actually look up to people such as Donald Trump – people who think success means looking down on other people, people who would do so themselves given any minuscule leverage – will simply call you a Hater. (The fact that Donald Trump became President means there are an awful lot of these people.)

This is what people are doing now when you mention Kevin Durant’s astonishingly lame decision to join the Golden State Warriors. He has a Championship. End of discussion. Stop being a Hater.

Durant’s Championship means about as much as Trump’s gold toilet. Neither of them earned it themselves.

The American Dream has become status over substance. Needless to say it’s a completely insolvent system, as not everyone can achieve higher status than everyone else. Either you have something, or you’re trying to steal someone else’s. This is how every empire has crumbled.

They say if you can’t beat them, join them. Take that Public Relations job for Shell Oil, help cover up the spill. If you don’t do it, someone else will.

Join the Golden State Warriors. If anyone should point out that it’s a total chump move, just assume they’re jealous.

Success is now defined as being able to look through yourself in the mirror.

For a Christian nation, it appears to contradict every lesson in the bible, but you don’t have to actually read that.

Or listen to Wu Tang to get the tattoo.

Screw the Haters.

Prescription drug use is way up.

Since Reagan, the Republican party has succeeded in slowly eroding America’s middle class. Corporations have merged. We’re trending towards less competition. In commerce and in basketball. It’s now the rich and the poor.

Where else would a pair of courtside tickets sell for $133,000 then at a Golden State Warriors game?

How appropriate.

Raytheon stock is up too.

Sixteen and One.