If Kevin Durant took Kendrick Perkins’ advice, he’d be playing for the San Antonio Spurs, not the Golden State Warriors.
During an appearance on The Vertical Podcast with Adrian Wojnarowski, Perkins, who played several seasons in OKC with Durant, provided some insight on his former teammate’s decision to leave the Thunder and join the Warriors.
Perkins talked to Durant before he made his decision in free agency and suggested that he join the Spurs if he was going to leave the Thunder.
“I actually talked with Kevin, and to be honest, I really didn’t think he was leaving. And to be honest, I thought if he left – because he asked me – I said, ‘Listen, man, if you leave? My honest opinion, if you really want to leave, the other team that I think you should go to, in my opinion, is the San Antonio Spurs.’ And I told him this flat-out. I said, ‘If you’re leaving Oklahoma City, that first-class organization, I don’t know too much about Golden State. But I do know – I ain’t never been in San Antonio, but I done been around to know enough – and I told him that would be the place. But I told him at the end of the day – and he can tell you this – I said, ‘It’s not how I feel. It’s now how your momma feel. It’s not how your agent feel.’ I said, ‘You have to go what’s in your heart.’ And we talked maybe – this was a conversation that probably was had about June 25 or something like that. And I didn’t talk to him no more. I didn’t want to call him. Me and him didn’t need to talk. And then when I woke up that morning and seen he signed with Golden State, it was just kinda like, ‘Wow.’”
The Spurs were one of the teams Durant met with over the summer, but he chose the Warriors instead.
