It’s Kevin Durant and the internet, so first let’s deal with all the reaction to his construction-worker garb — accessorized with shorts — for Friday’s tour of the Chase Center site.
“I was dressing the part, man,” Durant said with a big smile in the Warriors’ locker room after Saturday night’s victory over Brooklyn at Oracle Arena. “Shit, I thought I looked good.”
Of course, Durant had to wear the flourescent orange vest, hard hat, boots and safety glasses on Friday — those were mandatory for everybody on the tour, including me, many other reporters and camera crews, high-level sponsors, team president Rick Welts, and, yes, Durant.
So if it happened to turn into a meme, so what? Durant said he didn’t exactly know what he was getting into by agreeing to do the tour but chuckled when recalling that a few excited reporters asked him if he’d commit to re-signing with the Warriors right then and there, on camera.
“What are we doing here?” Durant said then with mock exasperation and repeated it Saturday. “I mean, what are we doing here? I was just curious and wanted to take a look. I ain’t signing shit right now.”
Then he laughed some more. That was just a tour and not a preview of Durant’s pending free-agent decision next summer. Though, to be fair, almost everything he does and says over this season will be analyzed and scrutinized mostly because he has set it up that way.
Durant could stay with the Warriors. He could leave. He will spend this season weighing everything. That’s what he set up last July by signing only for one more year (with a player-option for another season that Durant almost certainly will not exercise).
In between, a lot of things have happened and will happen, including that tour, the final stages of Chase Center construction (for an opening next fall, in time for the 2019-20 Warriors season) and the Warriors’ quest for a third consecutive championship to end their Oracle tenure.
With all that understood, I just wanted to know what Durant was thinking as he walked around the dirt, dust and workers on the Chase site.
“Obviously, it’s still a work in progress, so it’s kind of hard to see the finished product,” Durant said Saturday. “But just to know they’re building such an amazing complex not just for sports but entertainment for the Bay Area …
“I think it’s a place not just for the Warriors but for the whole Bay Area to come and enjoy — concerts, basketball games. I think Peter Guber, Rick Welts, Joe Lacob, the whole ownership group — I’m sure there’s a whole lot of names I’m forgetting that are responsible — are bringing an amazing venue for the city of San Francisco and for the whole Bay Area to enjoy. Whole West Coast, to be honest.”
Durant was also on hand for the official Chase Center groundbreaking back in January 2017 and subliminally (or more than subliminally), he has become the Warriors player most associated with the move to San Francisco. Even though it’s in a year. And he still has a decision to make about next season and beyond.
He doesn’t mind this connection to Chase, at all.
“That was almost two years ago,” Durant said. “To see where it is now. That’s a lot of hard work being put into that.
“It’s going to be an amazing place for us as a group, as basketball players. The environment to hone in your skills, that place is going to be incredible. Your imagination, your creativity is just going to be flowing walking into that building every day.”
When the tour reached the spot where the court will be, Durant looked to the upper reaches of the arena and all around — and beamed and waved when a couple of construction workers shouted his name from several stories above him — and said he could imagine a lot of points being scored here.
On Saturday, he added: “You just know that the energy in that building is going to be next level and the players will feed off of that. Just going to be so much excitement. It’s going to be different and fresh.
“But we’re still the Golden State Warriors. We’re the whole Bay Area. We still want that core authentic fan to come watch us no matter where we are.”
Quinn Cook, who also toured the site on Friday, said he was most struck by the detail of the construction and the area around the building.
“Obviously, they’ve got eight months to go, but you just see that vision and you see how much time they put into it,” Cook said. “It was incredible to see.”
Cook, like Durant, said he was happily surprised to hear that there will be a players-only barbershop built near the vast locker room.
“That’s amazing,” Cook said. “And the water — I didn’t see the water until we got upstairs. Then I looked behind me and the whole Bay was right there. It’s incredible.”
It wasn’t a signing ceremony. It wasn’t a full commitment by anybody. But it was an interesting day in the life of the Warriors, with a new home under construction that they love to show off and at least one very interested player who caused a stir just by showing up and putting on a hard hat.
There is also a larger picture to this: Durant will have many factors playing into his decision next July, but at some point it will come down what he sees and feels from the ownership and management groups from all signficant options. And the Warriors’ vision and stability is right there — and being updated — in front of his eyes.
