Warriors wooed Kevin Durant with virtual reality

Silicon Valley continues to be a joke

The Golden State Warriors are a team of the people. They’ve hardly ever been notable in the past 40 years, but still drew huge crowds out in Oakland, culminating in the We Believe year a decade ago when a fun, crappy 8-seed knocked the 1-seed Dallas Mavericks from the playoffs. Folks around the Bay Area even repped them incessantly when they went through the ugly color scheme/logo years.

But the problem with the Warriors’ recent success is two-fold. First, coming back from 3-1 against the Thunder and keeping Durant (and Westbrook) from the finals came across as villainous, while the single-season win record put a target on their back. Them falling to Lebron, to many, felt like the Patriots going 19-1, which isn’t quite the appropriate comparison.

Some of the anger is stoked by relatively recent owner Joe Lacob who, as Deadspin notes, “more or less takes the credit for his team’s success and attributes the Warriors’ historic season to his acumen as a Silicon Valley doofus.” Oh god he’s so fucking obnoxious and has people fallaciously associating the Warriors, playing in Oakland, with general Bay Area/Silicon Valley (over an hour away) tech douchebaggery. 

I bet he thinks he single-handedly got Kevin Durant to sign with the team this offseason, too.

Apparently the team stuck a virtual reality headset in Durant’s face during his meeting. According to USA Today, “There were shots of the Golden Gate Bridge, footage from the Warriors practice facility, of coach Steve Kerr talking to his team inside the Oracle Arena locker room and even a courtside view inside the building,” all set to Drake lyrics.

I’m sure that bit of disruptive innovation is what convinced Durant to come to Oakland, not, 1) the idea of winning a championship, 2) that the Warriors went 73-9, 3) that Durant is good friends with Steph Curry, Draymond Green, and Andre Iguodala, or 4) getting the fuck out of Oklahoma fuckin’ City.

Nope, it was all the 3D PowerPoint ginned up by the tech nerd who wasn’t even involved with the team when it drafted back-to-back MVP Steph Curry.

Kevin Durant: Chemistry, culture were huge factors in choosing Warriors [USA Today]