He won FMVP by unanimous acclaim. He drove the team to the championship. Its silly to say that a FMVP was "carried".
The first 3-peat team was so good that they won 50+ without Jordan. Use whatever term you like. Neither won jack when they weren't playing on arguably the most talented team in basketball. If it's ok for Magic and Kareem to play almost a whole decade together I really don't care who plays with who. All players with a bunch of rings had a bunch of help.
Winning awards is completely irrelevant. He joined a team that just broke the NBA record for wins in a regular season so that they'd carry his ass to a championship because he'd always been a failure as a top star. The fact that he was successful in being carried to that championship changes nothing and it's clear that he's just the guy in the gimp suit given that they forced him to take a pay cut just to stay on the team while giving others the max. They know he's not "the guy", he knows he's not "the guy", all he cares about is taking credit for being carried to championships, he's the new Phil Jackson only he's a player.
This settling for less money is circumventing the purpose of the rule. I guess nobody expected that, but salaries have inflated so quickly that one can get by on only 25 million dollars.
Durant carried those two to the title....Klay and Draymond shot like rubbish in the Finals Without Durant, i reckon the Cavs would have won again he proved himself by dominating
unselfish from a financial standpoint but EXTREMELY selfish in so many other ways. He won't even let it be fair. **** this guy. He is straight up ruining and killing the nba parity for millions of people. the salary cap was put into place assuming that guys would go for money so that no team can horde all the talent. He is completely ******** on that.
I think that in future, this is the model for how superteams will be formed and maintained. Players take discounts to build the superteam and win championships. Championships leads to higher profile and mega-endorsement deals. Mega-endorsement deals more than dwarf the sacrifice of on-court salary. In effect, Nike, Adidas, etc will be underwriting superteams and in effect circumventing salary caps.
Hasn't Nike already agreed to pay the difference when Durant moved to the Bay Area? Sure, this might seem generous on the surface to help Durant rehab his image, but I would never trust a snake. I bet this is a 1+1 deal like LeBron. Durant wins a few more rings then bails like LeBron to fix his legacy.
Its not a few million. Its several tens of millions when you factor in "super" luxury tax. I'm thinking that the owners, Iguodala and Durant all had a good understanding of the cap and luxury tax implications and worked together on it. So the owners probably had a hard line of not going into super luxury tax and said they'd probably have to let Iguodala walk rather than pay super luxury tax. And then Durant seems to be saying, I'll partly pay for his salary so you can still be under super luxury tax territory. If the owners were dead set on not going into super-luxury territory and this was made known, then in effect Durant is paying Iguodala to stay.
It's a continuation of rebuilding his legacy. If/when they roll off another 2-3 championships historians and writers will cite The Sacrifice of Summer 2017 as the point where a dynasty was created because Kevin Durant was so selfless. Trust me, that's the narrative that will play out from now until when the Warriors finally break up. Hell it's getting full blast right now on social media and media outlets.
Per Bobby Marks @ ESPN, because Durant signed for less than what he could have signed for he saved the GSW about 20 million in the tax bill. You have to sort of appreciate the fact that he only signed for one year with a player option for the next year (as injury insurance I'm sure), I bet there's a slight chance if George ends up staying in OKC and Russ signs an extension Durant has the option of going back next season. Kudos to Durant for being a team player, Curry could have taken a few million less too to help the team out but who really cares. Owners who are willing to pay the Luxury Tax repeatedly are showing they are more committed to take risks to win over the cheaper owners (OKC) who would rather save a few million and cap flexibility than give max deals to worthy players.
He basically just made sure his move to golden state will not have the consequences it should have when big time players join a team like the Warriors. It's all about image
