OAKLAND — Kevin Durant spent the weeks following the 2009 season scouting draft prospects. This was a monster moment for his young Thunder. The two Junes prior, Sam Presti nailed his top picks, selecting Durant second in 2007 and Russell Westbrook fourth in 2008. Hit on one more — right before the flood of lottery chances would stop — and this thing could really take off.
The Thunder picked third. Blake Griffin, the consensus top choice, was off the table. But there remained debate around the Grizzlies at two: Hasheem Thabeet or James Harden?
“Hasheem was a really good player coming out of college, but I wanted Harden,” Durant said. “I was watching him closely, checked out his pre-draft workout, looked at mock drafts, trying to see if he’d go two.”
Harden and Durant stayed in contact after he visited OKC. Harden told Durant he didn’t work out well for Memphis. There was hope. The Grizzlies passed, taking Thabeet. The Thunder pounced, injecting Harden into a core that, years later, is now viewed as maybe the most stunning collection of young talent in NBA history, but also one of the league’s greatest non-title ‘What if’s.’
The Warriors play the Thunder on Wednesday and the Rockets on Friday. Durant is having a massive all-around season in his first year with Golden State. But many consider him a distant third in the MVP race. Two others have sprinted out ahead of the pack: Westbrook in OKC and Harden in Houston, fending for themselves, putting up unprecedented numbers on a near nightly basis.
In advance of separate showdowns against both of his former teammates, Durant sat down with the Bay Area News Group to remember those early, formative years, when these three transformational talents were just young, hungry, naïve and together, unaware of everything to come.
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“It’s easy to say we were supposed to be together for the rest of our careers, but it didn’t play out like that,” Durant said. “I think all three of us will have memorable careers. And it’ll be a journey we’ll always remember, something that’s different and unique, playing with two different guys who are doing incredible things in the league right now. But when you look back, think about the fun times instead of what could’ve been.”
The Thunder’s first practice facility sat 25 minutes north of downtown — a secluded, converted roller-rink just up the road from a Purina factory. When the wind picked up from the south, it reeked of dog food. These days, the facility houses the franchise’s D-League team. But back then, it was the competitive proving ground for three all-time talents, feeling so separated from the rest of the world.
“Scotty Brooks had this rule: No fouls,” Durant said.
Those early practices were ferocious. Durant and Westbrook were 21, a year older and a year more experienced than Harden. They’d been in OKC from Day 1. Harden arrived in Year 2 of the relocation. Durant and Westbrook ran the starting unit. Harden was given control of the bench mob. In scrimmages, Brooks pitted them up against each other. Flagrant fouls were met with a shrug, not a whistle.
“James was a hack in practice,” Durant said. “He’d grab, hold, whatever…A lot of us would be like, ‘Yo, what are you doing?’ and he’d just be like, ‘Play through it.'”
Each of the three stole attributes from the others. Durant was the humble leader, the face of the franchise who preached group, group, group instead of me, me, me. Westbrook was the laser focused worker, the least recruited, least recognized of the three who willed himself into stardom with diligent, repetitive work day after day.
“Let’s not get it twisted. He has God-given ability. Nobody is that fast, that athletic, that explosive,” Durant said. “If you’re that explosive and you’re not in the NBA, that’s your fault. But he put that together with having a routine and being just…he always stuck with what he wanted to do, post practice, pre practice. That’s why he is who he is.”
Harden was the crafty assassin with the natural feel for the angles and quirks of the game, a foul magnet that would invite and initiate contact. Play through it, he’d tell them, even at 20.
“He was mature at that age,” Durant said. “Definitely a worker. That’s what all three of us had in common and it trickled down to the rest of the group.”
That first year together — all still of college age — they led the Thunder to 50 wins and a playoff berth. They pushed the eventual champion Lakers to six games in the first round. Then they arrived the next season invigorated by the quick success.
In the weeks leading up to that 2010 training camp, the team went through “bootcamp,” as Durant called it. Their trainer, Dwight Daub, designed a rigorous program, which included pool workouts, tire-flipping and sand sprints. They’d all hop in pickup trucks and zip up to a nearby drainage basin in the suburb of Edmond, running the steep incline under the scorching late-summer Oklahoma sun.
“He’d been in the league 20-plus years. He was an old-school guy,” Durant said of Daub. “If you look back at those years — 2010, 2011, 2012, right before James left — all of us were in the best shape of our lives. Physically, we were just wearing teams out.”
Harden took a leap from Year 1 to 2. He dominated summer league and arrived more prepared, mentally and physically, for a bigger role. At 21, he was already one of the league’s most productive bench players. It rounded out the team. The Thunder won 55 games and went to the West Finals for the first time, losing to the eventual champion Mavericks.
“He had that command of the second unit,” Durant said. “He knew that was his group. I would sit down on the bench and play 21 minutes sometimes because they’d take the game over and we’d win by 20 or 30. It was just a joy to see. Then he had 40 coming off the bench one night and I was like, yeah, this guy’s different.”
It all came together that next season. Harden became the youngest Sixth Man in league history. Durant was already the league’s youngest scoring champion. Westbrook had morphed into an imposing every night force. Serge Ibaka protected the back-line.
The Thunder returned to the West Finals and, after trailing 2-0, beat the veteran Spurs four straight times to reach the NBA Finals. In Game 5 of that series, Harden hit his most famous shot — a dagger 3 over a young Kawhi Leonard to steal homecourt and eventually the series.
The trio combined to score 71 points in a Game 1 win over LeBron James’ Heat. They were three wins from an NBA title. Harden was 22, Durant and Westbrook were 23. The chatter was building: Would this brand new franchise, plopped in middle America, rule the NBA for the next decade?
“No. We never looked at it that way, like we could be best of all-time,” Durant said. “It was really AAU basketball, man. We were just having fun. We weren’t listening to anyone on the outside, media, none of that. It was just pure fun. When we did hear something about the group, it was like, what is this? That was so foreign to us because we never paid attention to it.”
But the business side of basketball got in the way. That summer, entering Year 4, Harden was eligible for an extension. Durant, Westbrook and Ibaka already received theirs. The two sides had a brief stalemate over a reported $6 million difference.
The extension deadline was nearing. Presti opted against playing out the season and pushing it into restricted free agency. OKC traded Harden to Houston in what remains one of the most complicated, scrutinized deals in NBA history. The Thunder remained competitive, winning 60 games the next season, making the West Finals two times in the next four years and running into a batch of injury-related ‘What if’s’ along the way.
But now that Durant’s gone, the era is over and a championship was never delivered, most backtrack to the early years to ask what could have been, when Harden was still there and the future was at its brightest.
Could the trio have really stayed together? Could it have financially worked? In their early 20s, could all three have been willing to absorb all the potential sacrifices, from the endorsements to the shots to the money? Could Westbrook and Harden, who are 1-2 in the NBA in time of possession per game — 9.0 minutes for Harden, 8.7 for Westbrook — have shared the load? Could Durant, one of the most gifted scorers in history, still got his deserved chunk of the pie? Could a 27-year-old James Harden still be satisfied in a Sixth Man role? Could all that have really worked?
“I think he’d have stayed in that role. I think so,” Durant said. “He’d have still been a really great player. You look at it, a lot of people wouldn’t have looked at him as a Sixth Man. He’d have been better. I think he’d have been better. Obviously I’m sure he loves what he’s doing now, but if we would’ve won a championship, I think the perception of him would’ve just been as a great player. ‘He’s the heart, he’s what makes us go.’ That’s what his label would’ve been, instead of just Sixth Man. He would’ve probably been the best Sixth Man that ever was.”
Durant paused, looking perturbed at himself for even entertaining the question.
“But don’t even worry about that,” he said. “I don’t even want to talk about that.”
These days, Durant tries to stay in the present. He focuses on the Warriors and says he doesn’t watch much basketball. But he’ll always carry around his past. Three reminders come this week. Durant’s Warriors face Westbrook’s Thunder on Wednesday, Harden’s Rockets on Friday and Ibaka’s Magic on Sunday.
Westbrook arrives averaging an Oscar Robertson like triple-double: 30.7 points, 10.5 rebounds, 10.3 assists. Harden’s season has been equally as eye-popping: 28.4 points, 8.2 rebounds and 11.7 assists. Even for a guy who tries to limit his basketball intake and push past his past, it’s hard for Durant to ignore.
“I just look at the numbers, man,” Durant said. “I see it here and there. This (stuff) is ridiculous.”
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