Doc Rivers: It was ‘tough’ to see Kevin Durant join Warriors

As it turns out, LA Clippers head coach Doc Rivers felt the same way many of us did when Kevin Durant chose to join the Golden State Warriors.

In an appearance on ESPN’s “Mike & Mike” on Tuesday, Rivers discussed the former MVP’s decision to head to the Bay Area.

“It is tough when you see a guy join a team, in Durant’s case, what he did this year,” Rivers said, per Jordan Heck of Sporting News. “That was tough for anybody, anybody’s that’s competitive, to watch. He lost, and then he joined. Having said that, it was his choice. I have no problem with him. But it’s something from a competitive standpoint, you would think you wouldn’t do.

“I have no problem with him doing it,” he continued. “It’s just something from a competitive point, for me, I guess when I played it would have been tough for me to join Detroit. Having said that, he has the ability to do it, guys are doing it, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Of course, Rivers has a vested interest in the power balance of the Western Conference — the Warriors are the Clippers’ biggest rivals (if you can even call them that based on Golden State’s clear head-to-head superiority these last few years) and Durant’s decision to join effectively slammed Lob City’s title window emphatically shut. Rivers also hints at the generational divide in play here, as many other former players from the ’80s and ’90s have publicly stated how foreign this era of joining forces on a superteam is to them.

While the Durant-Golden State marriage was more of an outlier made possible by a convergence of fortunate developments in favor of the Warriors, it’s simply the reality of the life in the NBA now, and there’s little that Rivers and rest of the league’s more modest class can do to realistically compete.