Kevin Durant said it was all about basketball. But that's just kind of hard to believe.

When Durant decided to leave the Oklahoma City Thunder and sign with the Golden State Warriors, it was a loss for every small professional sports market. Of course Durant would be doing this. How could we compete in the first place?

There were plenty of rules in place that helped OKC hold on to Durant for a decade but when it came time for KD to become an unrestricted free agent this summer, what was in the Bay Area was too much for him to pass up.

That starts with the 73-win Warriors and the kind of basketball they play. But it includes things like the tech industry in the Bay Area.

Via Anthony Slater of The Mercury News:

There are plenty of recruiting tools with which the Warriors can entice NBA players to both come and stay in the Bay Area. An underrated allure: the tech industry. Kevin Durant was intrigued by it. Andre Iguodala is involved in it. Stephen Curry is dipping deeper into that world, continuing on Tuesday night when Curry was a guest speaker at TechCrunch Disrupt on Pier 48 in San Francisco.

Curry recently spoke about the culture of the area and being involved with the tech industry.

“I’ve been here for seven years and it’s kinda engrained in the DNA of the area,” Curry said. “When I talk to other players, when they come in for games and play us at Oracle, that conversation comes up a lot: ‘Can you introduce us to so and so (in the tech world)? Do you know so and so?’”

It seems like this might be something Durant wants to get involved in as well.

Basketball is first in the lives of players like Durant, there's no denying that, but there are also other things as well outside of the sport. It's tough for OKC to compete with the Bay Area when it comes to that.