These are the nights when you would like there to be a cartoon thought bubble hovering above Kevin Durant’s head during the basketball game, or perhaps a side dish of truth serum served alongside the chicken and the vegetables at the postgame food spread.
Because these are the nights when you’d really like to know what Kevin Durant really thinks about his present basketball lot, nights when he gets an up-close look at his glorious past while pondering his profoundly uncertain present.
Because there was Steph Curry, Durant’s old running mate, his old championship partner, lighting up the night and taking over Barclays Center. There was Curry, as electric as ever, eliciting the loudest cheers from start to finish, scoring 37 points on only 19 shots, draining nine 3s, leading the Warriors to a 117-99 thumping of the Nets.
“That,” Durant said, after a stunningly uncharacteristic 6-for-19 night, “is the level we want to get to.”
Now, look, you know where this is going, certainly, because the contrast is delicious. Durant could have played out his days with Curry as his wingman and chief foxhole guy, and there’s no telling how many championships they might have added to the two they already have. But Durant chose a different wingman.
And Kyrie Irving’s foxhole …
Yeah. That’s a little different than the one he shared in California with Curry, who looked like he was having the time of his life Tuesday night, chomping on his mouthpiece and toying with whichever overmatched Net was trying to guard him.
“We were coming in heavy this year,” Curry said at game’s end, after Golden State had improved its NBA-best record to 12-2. “We wanted to set our own narrative, our own agenda. It’s going to be a great year for us to have chip on our shoulder. We have championship DNA, but it’s been two years since we’ve been able to prove it.”
The Warriors are good and they are deep. They have a couple of the most intriguing and fun young players in the league in 19-year-old Jonathan Kuminga and 22-year-old Jordan Poole, and a few wise old hands in Draymond Green and Andre Iguodala and, most telling, they are still incomplete. Klay Thompson will return in a few weeks after two-plus idle years. James Wiseman will be back soon thereafter.
And, of course, there is Curry.
“He’s incredible,” Durant said, and you have to wonder if there were times Tuesday night, especially after the starters were sentenced to the bench for the duration of the game in the fourth quarter, when Durant didn’t let his mind wander for a second or two. He wouldn’t be human if it didn’t.
Now even if Irving decided to get jabbed Wednesday and joined the Nets next week, there are some issues around this team. It’s glaring how wide the gap between the Nets and the Warriors is right now, and it’s troubling that all five of the Nets’ losses have been by 13 points or more, that four of them are to the only legit good teams they’ve thus far played — Milwaukee, Miami, Chicago, Golden State.
As James Harden (whose truth-serum-inspired quotes might also be quite revealing) said: “The goal is to be the best team at the end of the season. Right now we’re nowhere near that.”
The Nets had plenty of reasons to look as ragged as they did. They just completed a six-game road swing, beating up on five patsies and losing to the Bulls. Durant’s shoulder is a little banged up (though he typically refused to use that as an excuse). Joe Harris missed the game with a bad ankle.
And the Warriors are a bear.
Losing isn’t the issue here; noncompetitiveness is. The Warriors ran the Nets out of the gym in the third quarter, 35-18, and a fair amount of that damage came after Curry was forced to the bench with his fourth foul. By the time he returned the lead was 20. And the best team in pro basketball had shown a sold-out crowd of 17,732 — many of whom seemed to be rooting for them — and the rest of the NBA community that their record is no fluke.
“We didn’t have our juice tonight,” Steve Nash said.
They also didn’t have a certain point guard, and it happened to be a night when everyone had to wonder just how different things might be had he been there. And when Kevin Durant had to wonder — even for a few seconds — how different things might be for him with his old wing man.