WINNING RIGHT: THE NORMS OF FANDOM AND THE REHABILITATION OF KEVIN DURANT

By: Johnston Hill

Note: Due to formatting quirks, footnotes appear as full-sized numbers. e.g: (1), (2), (3)...

"IT WAS HIS CHOICE ALONE TO MAKE"

The aftermath of Kevin Durant’s decision to sign with the Warriors follows a predictable arc. It begins, as with most stories of redemption, at a low. Contempt still abounds. But time heals all, and the rehabilitation has begun.

We’re told that there’s nothing wrong with Durant's decision. He wanted to try something new, he wanted to embed himself in a more exciting, opportunity-rich market. Who are we to judge a man who chooses the shimmer of San Francisco over the backwater of Oklahoma City? After all, this was a personal decision - a decision a man has every right to make for himself and his family.

We’re told that he had to endure a shared a court with Westbrook, leaving Durant to watch more (both the greatness and the squandering) and act less, even as the better player. We’re told that Lebron created a superteam (twice), and has long since been forgiven (1). Durant simply wanted to win, and he did what anyone who wants to win enough would do. Anyone implying that Durant took the coward’s way out - that joining the Warriors wasn’t “the right way” - is wrongheaded. They’re bloviating faux-macho hacks or whiny, covetous keyboard clowns. Both are pathetic as they rail against perceived wrongs they can’t control.

We’re told there is no fair basis to question Durant and his decision (The only minor exception is for the dedicated Oklahoma City fan. In that case you don’t have to like it, but you do have to empathize with it and admit he’s a good guy. Additionally, you should be thankful for what you did receive. Pray you do not lose more). The desire to live elsewhere and play for a better team - those all the reasons anyone needs not to judge.

MODES OF BEING AND BASKETBALL

For at least some of us, sports are more than a game (2). Sports and the visceral competition they embody are an important part of what it is to be a human being. In this way, we might think of sports as an aesthetic and humanistic enterprise, as analogous to art, literature, music, or even love. Sports act, as those other endeavors do, as fundamental human goods, as part of the stuff that makes life worth living.

Like all social institutions, sports have their own mode: their own code of conduct, their own sphere of performance (let’s call this the “mode of competition” or the “mode of sports”). In this mode, it is acceptable - no, it is desirable - for us to hate our opponents. We embrace us versus them. We disdain betrayal. We tribalize. We aspire to achieve greatness, and achieving greatness means starting from somewhere that isn’t the top. In the mode of competition, we are constituents of a group bound by a banner. We are not life coaches or financial advisors. Empathy for other competitors, their friends, their families, and their cities is not our purview, at least in this mode of being (3).

Before this devolves into advocacy for sports-oriented feudalism and city militias warring on gameday (4), it’s worth stating the obvious. When we interact with people in our lives, we do so in a variety of modes. We adopt different social strictures when ordering a beer than when we enter the subway. Those modes of being are then quickly cast aside when it’s time for work, a mode which is just as quickly put away when we see a romantic partner. So, this is not to argue that the competitive mode should supersede all others.

It is to argue that there are instances in which the competitive mode can and should be embraced. And in that mode, Kevin Durant sidelined competition in favor of other considerations. In the competitive mode, Durant acted as a coward.

That does not entail that KD is a coward in all aspects of being. It’s certainly possible to relate to athletes beyond the paradigm of a sports fan or competitor.

SHOULD YOU EVER BOO A NICE BASKETBALL PLAYER?

Consider the passing of Chyna Thomas, Isaiah Thomas’ sister. The photo of Avery Bradley consoling Thomas magnified the raw humanness of his pain. In the moments after seeing the photo, I thought of catching IT practice on Tacoma courts, of watching him goof around with Nate Robinson in a Seattle summer league. I remembered walking down to the court of a small college gym. I remembered standing as close to him as I could without being noticed to see if I could get a read on his actual height.

Those inconsequential run-ins were the most immediate and personal moments I’ve had with IT (though personal is strong - there is no way he remembers me). All the same, they were moments in which we shared a space and he performed his bewitching craft for a relatively intimate audience. The fact that in a moment of tragedy, my first thoughts about Thomas concerned not a competitor, but the suffering of a fellow human and the mundane moments we shared, makes clear that some things vastly outweigh sports and its mores, no matter how highly one values the mode of competition.

Some modes of being matter to us - and should matter to us - more than others. And just as we should empathize with athletes as people, we should not let the mode of competition blind us to athletes' immorality. The sports page abounds with examples of quintessential competitors who behave in questionable, unacceptable, and evil ways. Except for the most grievous violations, athletes, particularly highly skilled athletes, tend to escape serious consequences (5). We are right to lament that athletes too often get away with too much, seemingly only because they are embraced by a culture that looks the other way, as long as the on-the-field results are there. It’s all to show that great competitors can be far from great people.

Whether enduring hardship or committing crime, athletes are people first. Happenings in the "mode of being a decent human" will always matter more than those concerning competition. But how much overall moral weight should we place on decisions that occurred in the competitive mode, when athletes were acting not as other day-to-day people, but as athletes qua athletes?

At least some. Competition, taken seriously, carries the normative weight of other existential human pursuits. As long as one purports to be a member of the community that cares about competition, we should expect him to adopt its code. That means always trying your hardest. That means never quitting. That means doing all you can to win, except cheating. That means loyalty to your teammates. And especially, it means never taking the easy way out.

It’s easy to view those norms as stupidly earnest jock-talk - if you can’t entertain the thought of taking them seriously, then discussions about the morality of the competitive mode are not for you. I am unashamed to say that, as a competitor and a fan, I take those norms seriously. They are the foundation of competition, an institution I love.

So when Kevin Durant elected to join the Golden State Warriors - the team of the reigning MVP, the team that had narrowly beaten him after overcoming a 3 -1series deficit, the team favored to win the next NBA title without him - he eschewed an essential competitive principle. Whatever his other reasons, as a competitor, Durant failed. As a competitor, he acted as a coward.

The “coward” label isn’t heartless or misanthropic. That criticism presupposes that we view Durant as a neighbor or acquaintance, some regular guy (6). Rather, fans view him and adjudicate his actions as a competitor, just as they should be expected to. We are not compelled to think of KD as another soul at the bus stop doing the best he can to make his way. He’s not that soul, and that’s not the mode of being he’s chosen to occupy. He is someone who tries to win and purports to compete, a willing player in the mode of competition.

As for Durant’s overall moral status? He’s likely a decent man. There is little reason to think otherwise. I wish him no ill-will, and if tragedy strikes him or those he cares about, he will be in my thoughts. The weightier happenings of life supersede the concerns of the competitive mode. As a human, just as all of us, he deserves empathy and respect.

This, however, remains: it is not inconsistent to view an athlete as occupying multiple modes of being. Those modes bleed into and interact with one another, and while some modes (e.g. global citizen mode, husband mode, father mode) matter more than others, together they sum to an identity.

And as a competitor, Durant took the easy way. Yes, it’s true: he had every right to make his choice. And we, in the mode of the competitor, have every right to disdain him for it.

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FOOTNOTES

(1) Yeah, I don’t forgive him.

(2) And for some of us, they’re not. If you don’t like sports or competition, you won’t get any argument from me. Some people don’t like books either, and while I don’t really get it, I don’t have much issue with people enriching their lives with whatever it is that they do like. Maybe horses or something.

(3) Perhaps there are other modes of sports fandom, modes in which the participants are there less for winning and more for fun. The atmosphere in this mode is almost certainly less heated, and you smile at the competition while competing. There may be a few testy (even heated!) moments of competitive flare, but that’s really not the point. The point it just having a good time and, ya know, breaking a sweat with some cool people. If that’s a mode of being that people want to embrace, you have no argument from me. But it is not a mode of being that captures the raw, humanistic elements that I ascribe the competitive mode (or at least it doesn’t for me).

(4) But if it does come to this, I might have to become a Spurs fan. (Yeah, I know the entire article is about not changing you allegiances, but if it’s do or die, you gotta look out for number one. One six-shooter and your blackest pair of cowboy boots, please). Pop just inspires confidence as a leader of men, and I’m thinking he’ll be tactically sound as well. Plus, he’s got an ally on the seas.

(5) Not that grievous behavior can’t also be ignored. Just ask some of the women at Baylor.

(6) I get that it’s totally absurd / laughably presumptuous to say what I would have done in KD’s shoes, but I think it’s worth saying I may very well would have left. In fact, I almost definitely would have left OKC. Sorry, Oklahoma, but life’s short, and I’ve got lifestyle concerns. I do, however, like to think that I wouldn’t leave for the team that so narrowly defeated me. To me, that eschewing of competitiveness is the real sin, and a sin I would hope I could avoid.

(7) Sports media often makes this and similar claims, in which athletes who make unpopular competitive decisions are lauded for off-the-field work. That’s probably the results of a number of factors (return to glory and behind the scenes narratives are always nice), but another may have to with how people in sports media view athletes. In sports media, athletes become a sort of occasional colleague, and in some cases acquaintances or friends. If that’s the case, it becomes more difficult to talk in terms of cowardness (lost-access, awkwardness, ruffled feathers). What’s more, fans claiming “coward” are more easily viewed as a heartless mob, even if those chants are less personal and more a defense of a cherished set of values e.g. the competitive mode.