Billy Donovan had to have been massively confused. Superstar players in the prime of their careers simply don’t leave the only franchise they’ve ever known via free agency.

Shaquille O’Neal and LeBron James are probably the only exceptions besides Kevin Durant, who decided to leave the Oklahoma City Thunder and sign with the Golden State Warriors.

Of course, the added detail of the Warriors winning an NBA record 73 games last season makes the transaction even more unbelievable, and it clearly took Donovan by surprise.

In a podcast with The Vertical, Donovan didn’t definitively say that he thought Durant was going to return, but that Oklahoma City was sitting in a very favorable position.

“I don’t know if I ever felt that he was going to necessarily come back, but I thought our meeting went very, very well,” said Donovan.

I remember having arguments with people about whether Durant was going to leave Oklahoma City. Honestly, my original prediction was that he was going to sign with the San Antonio Spurs.

I was pretty confident he was leaving, and there’s really no way for me to prove this, but from what I observed from afar, I don’t think he liked playing with Russell Westbrook.

I know that Donovan has said that those assumptions aren’t true, but I just think there’s deeper issues when a normally non-demonstrative guy like Durant is screaming at a teammate on the sidelines, and not just any teammate, but a superstar like Westbrook.

You combine that with how much he praised the Warriors’ chemistry after he signed with them, and it’s not a gigantic leap to assume there was something wrong in Oklahoma City.

A player beloved in that area and set to make more money there then he could on any other team doesn’t leave unless he feels unfulfilled.

The Western Conference Finals loss was demoralizing, and I remember thinking for a moment that there was no way he could possibly leave under those circumstances.

Then I remembered James’ last playoff series with the Cavaliers before he left. It was game 5 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals, and James shot 20% from the field in front of the home Cleveland crowd.

After the team was eliminated in game 6 by the Boston Celtics, I assumed that there was no way he could leave that city on such a bad note.

However, maybe disappointments like that make it more likely that a player just wants to start fresh somewhere else.

When Durant emphasized basketball situation as being his top priority well before he actually made his free agent decision, I figured he wasn’t going back to Oklahoma City.

Also, the fact that he set up all those meeting with those numerous teams vying for his services convinced me that he actually was prepared to leave.

People were telling me that it was all just an act for attention, but I didn’t think that Durant was that type of player.

He wasn’t going to deliberately waste those people’s time, or his own time for that matter. Maybe he was leaning towards returning until he met with the Warriors, but he was certainly prepared to leave, and that’s more than most superstar free agents over the years can claim.

I’m glad he signed with the Warriors, but I didn’t expect it to happen. I thought he was going to sign with the Spurs and make the Western Conference a bi-polar power struggle between the Warriors and Spurs for years to come.

As of now, though, the Warriors are truly in a category all their own in the Western Conference, and it’ll be interesting to see how the Thunder respond out on the court.