Kevin Durant’s decision to leave Oklahoma City and join the Golden State Warriors caught many people by surprise, and that would include the people running the team he chose to sign with.
Warriors president and COO Rick Welts told CBS Sports Radio’s Tiki and Tierney on Friday that nobody in the Warriors’ braintrust had any idea which way Durant was leaning until that fateful phone call on the morning of July 4.
“Well, I think we had hope,” Welts told the show. “We, like every other team, probably didn’t think it was going to happen, and I can assure you we had no indication it was going to happen until the phone rang at 7:30 in the morning in Bob Myers’ cabin on Lake Tahoe and Kevin called to give us his decision. I think there was a lot of screaming and yelling going on in the Myers’ cabin at that point in time.”
Welts said he isn’t concerned about the Warriors’ players cracking under the weight of expectation, as they’ve already been dealing with it for the last two years.
“I do think the advantage we have going into the season is we’ve gone through two consecutive seasons by making it to the Finals, winning once and losing once,” Welts said. “We know what both feel like, so the journey is going to be a familiar one for these guys. They know what the pressure is all about. Last year, 73 wins, most wins in the history of the league. Actually, adding our playoff wins, it was the most wins for any NBA team over the course of a season ever. So they feel the pressure every night. They’ve had a target on their back all last season. I can’t imagine guys being better prepared to go into what is going to be a year of incredibly high expectations.”
The players know that they’re going to be hated, but seem prepared for it. It will be a quick process. Durant’s decision definitely caught the basketball world by surprise, and the Warriors were no exception.
