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Steve Kerr Wasn’t Surprised That Kevin Durant Left

This past NBA summer, Kevin Durant signed a four-year contract, worth $164 million with the Brooklyn Nets, even though the Warriors offered Durant a supermax contract worth $221 million over five years.

In Brooklyn, Durant will be trying to build a new dynasty, together with his friend, Kyrie Irving.

This means that the last time we saw Kevin Durant wear Warriors colors, was when he hobbled off the field with a torn achilles. Not the best goodbye. Not for KD, not for the Warriors.

Ever since leaving California, Durant has been firing shots at his old employer, including coach Steve Kerr’s system. According to various reports, Kerr and Durant never really got along during their time as player-coach tandem, and Kerr now revealed that he wasn’t surprised at all that Durant left town.

Per The Full 48:

Howard Beck: “On a scale of 1 to 10, what was your surprise level when you heard he had decided to go?”

Steve Kerr: “Uh, 1. Not surprised…. It just felt different this past year. We kind of lost momentum. Internally, it just felt different, and it wasn’t anything tangible. People point to the Draymond-Kevin incident. I honestly don’t think that was that big of a deal, as crazy as that sounds.

I think it was just sort of, for whatever reason, just kind of ran its course. I don’t know why. I do think we’re in a different era where, you know, players are interested in new challenges… I just feel like players see that there’s a huge expanse out there. There’s this horizon with so many different opportunities, and so you’re just going to have fewer teams that stick together for a long period of time. And that’s just kind of how it felt this year for us, that this thing has a finite ending point, and this is probably it.”