Cleveland Browns defensive end Myles Garrett is not happy about Kevin Durant's recent run of success, questioning the route he took to obtain his two NBA championships in the last two seasons with the Golden State Warriors.
“KD broke the league,” Garrett told ‘The Ken Carman Show with Anthony Lima' (via Joe Vardon of Cleveland.com) — later expanding on the matter.
“You hopped onto a 73-9 team and he took the easy way out in my mind. It's different when LeBron left. He went to [Miami to join] Wade and Bosh but it wasn't something that was already guaranteed, something you already knew was going to have immediate success. [James] had to gel and work things into place.”
“With KD, you just stick him in and he scores. You already knew what they had. They were 73-9 before and you put the second-best player in the world on an already all-time great team and of course you're going to have success, pretty easy success. Anyone can have an off night and they can still find a way to win.”
Garrett's point kind of defeats itself, referring to James as the best player in the league, by nature of omission, and saying he wasn't a plug-and-play factor.
James had the same chance to play alongside his teammates and reached the Finals in every one of his four years with the Miami Heat, but lost to the Dallas Mavericks in his first season in South Beach, and another one to the San Antonio Spurs at the very end of his stint there.
Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh were still players at the prime of their careers when James joined, but the way Durant fit into this roster is a merit, not something that should be denounced.
Reminded that James was the one that kickstarted this movement of player-power in the NBA, he finished killing off his own argument within a few sentences.
“He kind of did,” said Garrett. “I guess he made his own demise or caused his own demise but at the end of the day I'd rather see hard caps.”
“It focuses more on team play, being able to have chemistry instead of getting the big player and who's going to change the game. You can get a couple of guys like Boston, who didn't have their two star players and yet they went to the [conference] finals because they all gave a collective effort. Everybody pitched in and were almost successful.”
Meanwhile, the Browns are still waiting on both things, star players and/or chemistry to come to their team, garnering only one win in their last two seasons after going winless in 2017.
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