Kevin Durant is truly one of the nice guys of the league, so it has been a big challenge for him to adjust to the negative comments he has been receiving after joining the Warriors.

Ramona Shelburne has a great piece on ESPN about how Durant has gotten support through this ordeal from a guy who knows full well what it’s like to be the target of criticism regarding a free agency choice: DeAndre Jordan.

Jordan faced severe backlash last offseason when he verbally committed to joining the Mavericks, only to change his mind and return to the Clippers.

It’s a false equivalency in some regards, because Jordan changed his mind and basically avoided telling Mark Cuban about his change of heart as long as possible.

Durant was always upfront about his choice, and treated all teams involved with respect. However, even though the anger directed at him by fans might not be as justified as it was for Jordan, they can still both relate to hearing so much negative sentiment about their choices.

Shelburne brings up the point that in some ways it was a betrayal on Durant’s part, because he had previously said that he wanted to remain in Oklahoma City for the rest of his career, but that’s a bit of a stretch.

Basketball is a business, and it goes both ways. If teams can choose not to re-sign players after their performances have declined, then players should feel no shame in choosing to change teams even at the peak of their abilities. Nobody is obligated to either stay in one place for their entire career or keep a player for their entire career.

Durant is a genuinely kind person, and the criticism he has faced from the basketball community is completely unwarranted. It’s easy for fans to objectify these players as commodities owned by a team, but they are human beings with emotions and feelings.

Durant made the choice that was right for him, and that should be the end of it. Fans who lament this decision clearly don’t care about Durant as a person, instead they are projecting their own desires for how he lives his life onto him.

Oklahoma City fans are upset at Durant because it means their team will be worse next season. They don’t stop to think about Durant as an individual, who wanted an opportunity to grow as both a person and a player in a new environment.

True fans of players should support whatever decisions these guys make in terms of their basketball career, because they’re only going to go down the path that they feel will make them reach their full potential.

It’s selfish to suddenly think negatively of a player just because he didn’t choose to go to a team they wanted him to play for. It’s Durant’s life, and he has the right of self-determination that nobody else has the authority to impede.

“He played his heart out for that team,” Jordan said, referring to the Oklahoma City Thunder. “If they can’t respect that, if other players can’t respect it, that’s their decision. At the end of the day, he’s happy and that’s the only person he has to satisfy.”

The counter argument goes something along the lines of Thunder fans loved and supported him, so he owes them something in return. Well, he played at an MVP-level for them. That should be enough.

Also, would those fans have been as supportive if his performance had begun to decline? Fans worship a player only when he performs exceptionally. There’s no unconditional love, so for any fan to act heartbroken at a star player leaving their favorite team is a selfish response.

They don’t miss the human being in the jersey, but the statistical production. It’s a superficial relationship.

Again, I don’t want to overgeneralize the fan experience, but seeing how a fickle group of people can turn on an athlete after slumping performances shows the true colors of that connection.

It’s completely dependent on performance. Would Durant have evoked the same type of response if he had made this decision at age 35 and coming off a season where he averaged 15 points per game? No, because it’s not Durant the person that is getting this anger directed towards him, but Durant the statistics.

That’s blatant objectifying of the subject at hand, and proof that Durant shouldn’t take any of this criticism too hard.

He did nothing wrong, and anybody angry at him for exercising his right via free agency to change teams is simply jealous that his addition to the Warriors will hurt the success of their own favorite team in the NBA.

Durant gave everything he had to Oklahoma City, and now he’s going to continue his career in Oakland and make new memories. Anybody who has a problem with that doesn’t respect Durant as a person.