It’d be easy to say that Warriors-Thunder is not a rivalry because one team is laughably more talented than the other. The Thunder have one superstar that determines their fate, while the Warriors have an embarrassment of riches that includes three of the league’s best shooters, two former MVPs, an enviable bench, and the reigning coach of the year. None of the three games the two teams have played have been close.
Warriors vs. Thunder proves all a rivalry needs is hate
Teams don’t need to play close games to be rivals. Bad blood is more important.
Photo by J Pat Carter/Getty Images
But the competitiveness of the games doesn’t have to be the only thing that makes a rivalry. The most important thing is that both sides hate each other.
Take the obvious rivalry between the New York Jets and the New England Patriots. In the 2000s, the Patriots have won 14 out of the 21 times they’ve met. In the 2010s, they won 11 out of the 15 meetings. In the six times that they’ve met since 2014, the Jets have only won once, and that game went to overtime. In the last game between the two sides, the Patriots cruised to a 41-3 blowout.
But both teams still circle this game on their calendars. The wins and losses haven’t dampened the seriousness of the game for each fan base. If we’re using competition as the determining factor for rivalries, you’d think the Patriots’ sea of wins would drown out the bad blood. It hasn’t.
It hasn’t for a simple reason: the two teams really dislike each other.
And that’s the main reason why the Thunder and Warriors have a rivalry. Drama makes everything better in sports.
The Patriots-Jets rivalry features a number of coaches and players that have moved between the two teams. Bill Belichick’s resignation as the Jets head coach on the day of his introduction so that he could take the Patriots job was the perfect tipping point. It turned the Patriots into a dynasty, while the Jets have struggled for an identity ever since.
Warriors-Thunder is the same. It’s not just that Kevin Durant left the Thunder for a different team. It’s that he went to the Warriors, the Thunder’s top competition. He went to a team that rallied from a 3-1 deficit to beat his own team. In the process, he gutted his old club and strengthened his new one’s hold on the NBA. He purposely became his old team’s biggest roadblock.
That intensifies the general ill will that comes when a great player leaves a team. In a sense, anger and resentment are childish reactions to a person making a good career decision. Playing basketball is Durant’s job, and he has the right to change employers if he feels he can have more success and happiness elsewhere.
But those silly emotions are the only reason people participate in this whole endeavor known as sports. Yes, they love watching great people perform their craft, but they’re not packing the fifth floor of an office building to marvel at the local clerk’s filing skills.
Even if fans see athletes like Durant as demigods, it would still be boring if they couldn’t get emotionally attached to the game. And when people spend years living vicariously through the successes of their favorite athletes, they are bound to take what is a business decision by someone like Durant as a personal offense. Part of their identity is infused in their team.
Thunder fans booing Durant at every turn is just a new iteration of the old heartbreak story. Their intense support for Westbrook is the flip side of that coin. Since he’s the one who stayed and valued them, he is now the unflappable best, whereas Durant is the unredeemable worst. A KowerD or a cupcake, if you will.
Before this last game, Durant didn’t want that hatred to be real.
He said that the problems between him and Westbrook were nothing but media hype, and that while he expected some boos from the crowd, he also craved some understanding because of the near-decade of service he provided them. He was wrong.
When Durant started guarding Westbrook in the third quarter, Westbrook tried to destroy him. The two got into a heated exchange during a timeout in that quarter and Westbrook told him several time, that he was coming for Durant. Then, Westbrook dropped 20 points against the man who once called him a brother in his MVP speech. The same man who broke the news of his departure to his supposed close friend via text message.
Then, of course, Durant and Andre Roberson butted heads, as well. And the game before this, Zaza Pachulia delivered a crushing block on Westbrook to send a message.
Durant can’t hide that he cares, either. He averages more points against the Thunder this season than any other team. Even if he doesn’t show it with the words and fire that Westbrook does, there’s an obvious impetus on his part to show out against his former team.
Yes, the Warriors are too good to make these games close. But this is a rivalry, even if the main parties involved would like to pretend that it’s not.
The stories that can be super-imposed on a game between two basketball teams — the lone rebel in Westbrook going against the powerful Empire of the Warriors — make the actual result unimportant. These two teams are too far apart in terms of quality ambition for final scores to matter. What matters most of all is that they hate each other.
That malice, along with the backdrop of Durant’s move, can make a rivalry even if the games are blowouts.
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