DAWill1128 wrote:The Durant joined a 73 win team has never been genuine reality of the situation. First, the Warriors lost Barnes and Bogut along with all the depth they had to get Durant. He didn't join in addition to that team like the narrative people want to create. The regular season is far more about depth than top end talent because of how long the season is, reason they didn't win even more regular season games when they signed KD.
Nobody is saying KD is joining the 64 win Sun's team, because he isn't. The Sun's swapped out talent just like the Warriors had.
First, that scenario is as close you can get to a star just joining a team for nothing. Unless a team has ever signed a free agent star without letting go of any significant free agents. Barnes was a mediocre starter who played a bargain bin version of Durants role which made Durant incredibly easy to slot into the starting line up (We saw what happened when Raptors swapped Kawhi for Derozan) . For their playoff rotation they basically swapped Durant for Barnes and 16 minutes of Bogut for Zaza. That's not a meaningful loss.
And they weren't
just a 73 win team, they made it to the Finals and were on the edge of back to back titles with a 3-1 lead. Then in 2019 when Durant went down, they closed out the Rockets, swept the WCF and went to 6 games of the Finals despite additional injury to Klay.
A few key differences with the Suns. Suns never won anything, didnt have another MVP and all time great, were a second round exit last year, and were on a 44 win pace 2/3rds of the way through this season (though they have dealt woth injuries). Mikal Bridges is better on both ends then Barnes is. They lost Jae Crowder and Cam Johnson both key rotation players. That's 3 of their top 5 players in minutes played last year (Mikal leading the team by a large margin) . Chris Paul's way past his prime and has fallen off a bit this year.
