LeBron James has long drawn the ire of fans outside of Cleveland, but has Kevin Durant surpassed him as the league’s biggest villain?
The notion of the NBA having comic book character-esque villains has always been a little ridiculous. Professional basketball is competitive and that leads to players doing or saying things that seem villain-like, when in reality it’s an unfair moniker.
One of the NBA’s most notorious “villains” of the last few years and also one half of the focus of this article is none other than LeBron James. But let’s be honest, he’s not a real villain.
After all, the guy has given exorbitant amounts of money to the Boys & Girls Club, he’s the founder of the LeBron James Charity Foundation, and has partnered with the University of Akron to give out scholarships to as many as 2,300 kids, beginning in 2021. Plus, he’s never gotten into any major off-court issues, which is impressive considering how closely the public eye watches his every move.
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So no, LeBron isn’t a villain in the sense that the Joker or Lex Luthor are villains, but that doesn’t mean fans are wrong for rooting against him. Sports are supposed to be fun, so there’s nothing wrong with singling a few guys out as targets for the rest of the league to try to take down. Fans have always rooted against certain athletes regardless of how good of an actual person they may be, because once game time hits, none of that matters.
That’s why our opinions of athletes are almost exclusively related to things they do on the court or decisions they make regarding their athletic careers. And for LeBron James and Kevin Durant, they’ve done plenty of unlikable things in that regard.
LeBron blazed the trail of career decisions that don’t jive with the fans when he left the Cleveland Cavaliers for the Miami Heat in 2010. But with Kevin Durant following suit and jumping ship from the Oklahoma City Thunder to the Golden State Warriors, has he jumped LeBron as the NBA’s biggest villain? Well, let’s take a look at their individual résumés and see if we can come to an official decision on who the league’s top bad guy really is.
We’ll start with the OG bad guy, LeBron James. When he came into the league, there was nothing villainous about him. He was an Akron boy who ended up playing basketball for his hometown Cavs.
But when he continuously came up short in his championship efforts, he packed his bags and headed for Miami to form a super-team with two fellow superstars. The way he did so didn’t make things any better, as “The Decision” was basically him saying “I’m going to have an hour-long special so everyone can watch me abandon my hometown.”
That made him a target, and there was no going back. No one outside of the city the team is based in wants to root for the juggernaut, and it’s even worse when the team comes together inorganically. But his decision to leave isn’t the only thing that’s painted him as a target over the years. There’s also the notion that he’s a diva and forced head coach David Blatt out of Cleveland this past season.
Hardwood Houdini
All of those issues come into play before we even discuss his play style. If your team is facing LeBron, even if you’ve had no exposure to him prior to that, it’ll probably be about 10 minutes before you hate him. His bruising style and penchant for dominating everyone who steps in front of him is a catalyst to make opposing fans hate him, at least until the game’s over. None of that is really LeBron’s fault, it’s just a product of him being as good as he is.
Obviously there are a lot of reasons why LeBron is the NBA’s perennial villain, but has that shifted over the course of the last few months? It very well may have, especially since LeBron redeemed himself by finally bringing a championship to Cleveland, the city he abandoned just a few years ago. Meanwhile, Durant has been moving the opposite direction.
So what does Durant’s résumé look like? Up to this point, there was absolutely nothing that pointed to him being a villain. He was loyal to Oklahoma City and had done his best alongside Russell Westbrook to bring a championship to fans of the small-market Thunder. But as you would assume, leaving to go to a team that just broke the record for most wins in a season has changed that.
The biggest difference between LeBron’s departure of Cleveland and Durant’s departure of OKC is LeBron didn’t have the “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” mentality. Yes, he went to a different, more powerful team, but not the one that ousted the Cavs from the playoffs consistently. That honor went to the Boston Celtics.
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Durant, on the other hand, is joining the team that just knocked the Thunder out of the playoffs and figured to be their biggest competition for the foreseeable future. That’s not a great look.
That kind of perceived cowardice doesn’t bode well for his campaign to avoid being the league’s biggest villain, and things seem to be getting worse by the day. ESPN’s Royce Young reported on the TrueHoop podcast that Durant supposedly told Russell Westbrook he would be returning to OKC, before ultimately deciding against it. So in addition to looking like a coward, Durant also looks inconsiderate.
Deciding if one player is more of a villain than another is a subjective issue, but we can at least speculate as to which player is more likely to be disliked by the general public.
Unfortunately for Durant, his decision to leave Oklahoma City couldn’t have been more poorly timed. LeBron finally brought a championship to his hometown Cavaliers, getting him that much closer to the fans’ good graces. And as soon as he makes up for his abandonment of his old team, Durant abandons his.
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A few months ago this would’ve been crazy to say, but it seems like Kevin Durant may indeed have surpassed LeBron James as the NBA’s biggest villain.