Kevin Durant's move to the Golden State Warriors is stunning and fascinating _ and should be troubling to the NBA.
If you're a Magic fan, you should hate it.
First, you hate it because Durant became another star to abandon a small-market team, so he wasn't going to choose Orlando as a free agent.
Secondly, you should despise his decision because it's just the latest _ and most blatant _ case of the NBA's best players congregating in one place.
We haven't seen anything like this: star-hoarding, super-sized.
Durant's move gives the Warriors four All-Stars: Durant, Steph Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green.
This is great for the league's television partners and for folks enamored with sports dynasties.
Four teams now essentially house a baker's dozen worth of elite players: there's the Warriors, Cleveland Cavs (LeBron James, Kyrie Irving, Kevin Love), San Antonio Spurs (LaMarcus Aldridge, Kawhi Leonard, Pau Gasol) and L.A. Clippers (Chris Paul, Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan).
It would be a better league if you spread around the top talent. It wouldn't be as sexy, but you'd have a larger collection of happy fans _ you know, the paying customers.
I've said this for years: It would be a much stronger league if there were fewer teams. There would be more stars to go around and less marginally talented players cashing in because they're tall. That's the greedy price you pay for runaway expansion.
But we're not putting that genie back in the bottle.
Years ago, the NBA tried to prevent the concept of this Warriors Super Team from forming, battling players in a lockout and devising mechanisms designed to help keep stars with their teams longer.
Then it landed the big billion-dollar score from the TV networks.
Instead of gradually raising the salary cap this year and next _ this "smoothing" idea by the league was rejected by the powerful players' union _ the NBA flooded all that money into the accounts of every team at once.
And suddenly, a club that set an NBA regular-season record with 73 victories and won a championship just two years ago had enough cap room to sign Durant.
The Warriors didn't really need Durant (like 25 other teams do). And Durant didn't really need the Warriors.
KD and the Thunder would have ousted Golden State in the West final if it were not for one poor stretch in Game 6, a stretch that ultimately altered the NBA universe.
By leaving OKC for Golden State, Durant merely upgraded from, oh, a Porsche to a Mercedes. But his move devastated one tumbleweed town and potentially created a dynasty in the Bay Area.
"Of course the NBA wanted to prevent this with the salary cap and the strike a couple of years ago," Dallas Mavs F Dirk Nowitzki told Omnisport. "They wanted to prevent a team gathering three, four or even five star players and get an easy road to the finals."
Durant has been criticized for hitching a ride. Charles Barkley said he is effectively "cheating." Accusations like this will follow Durant all season, even as confetti falls on top of his head.
"We live in this superhero comic-book world where either you're a villain or a superhero if you're in this position, and I know that," Durant said.
It's not Durant's issue. It's the NBA's.
