Durant Did Not Invent OKC

So Kevin Durant has signed with Golden State, and we're all heart broken about it. That's as it should be. The reason we play, follow, buy, and love sports is that we get to compress our emotions into something outside of ourselves but of relatively low significance. Sports, then, is like a compact dress rehearsal for real life. I am a sports fan. So I don't begrudge people their anger, heartbreak, feelings of betrayal about KD leaving to win himself a sure-thing ring. I'm not one of those people who will flame at angry fans, "why can't you understand it's just a business," or "if only you cared as much about education," and all those other things people say to make themselves feel superior to sportsball fans.

There is, however, one thing that is irritating me about the dialogue surrounding KD's departure: the suggestions like this one by ESPN writer Royce Young that "[Durant and Westbrook] helped grow a city together."

In Boston a couple weeks ago, an employee at a running store told me that he hopes Durant re-signs with the Thunder because, if he doesn't, the Thunder will be headed back to Seattle. It's not so surprising that a shoe salesman in Boston thinks that without Durant, a fly-over state with lousy weather can't hold on to an NBA team, but it is surprising how many similar (though not so ridiculous) statement are on social media today.

Of course, most of them are actually meant to defend KD. They express how much he did to build the city, represent the city, and so on. And I don't entirely disagree with all of them, but it's important that we remember one thing.

Neither Kevin Durant, nor the Oklahoma City Thunder built this city.

Certainly, the tax revenue created by the Thunder season, especially the deep playoff runs, have been important to our local economy. Certainly, the team and its success have brought (non-bombing related) outside attention to our city.  The Thunder have added to the quality of life in this city, and have given the community a team rally around together. But let's be clear:

The Thunder are a result of our city's growth, not the cause of it. This is what the shoe salesman in Boston didn't understand. We brought the Thunder here bacsue we became a place where the team was not only viable, but could thrive.

Superstar players come and go. This may be first in OKC's young history as a big league town, but it won't be last. Kevin Durant was an employee a professional basketball team who lived here for 8 years. He was not a city father. Now he's an employee of a different organization somewhere else. The Thunder is not going to pick up and move back to Seattle because of it. Our districts will not go dark, Devon Tower will not collapse (at least not yet), the canal will not dry up, because Kevin Durant did not build our city. We did.

We built it by investing in infrastructure, and urban walkability. We built it by willingly taxing ourselves to build things that we wanted in our city and that, it turns out, people looking for a place to settle want too. We have a long way to go. We have to fix education here. We have to figure out how to control sprawl and make mass transit survive. We have to diversify our economy so we don't tailspin every time fossil fuel prices hit the skid. But we've come a long way, and we are committed to growing even more and even better, despite what happens on a basketball team.

We built the city. And we are sticking around.