It’s now been almost a decade since the “KD2DC” movement, which tried to bring Kevin Durant home to the Wizards to team with Bradley Beal and John Wall and put what was then an emerging playoff team into a winner.
What happened, of course, was that KD signed with Golden State, won two rings, tore his Achilles, and is now in Phoenix via Brooklyn, while the Wizards made three more playoff appearances but haven’t had a wining season since 2017-18 and are now a season deep into a total tear down and rebuild.
Oh, but what could’ve been…
“People were making Durant Wizards jerseys, but Durant was out on it all along,” JP Finlay remembered Friday. “The Wiz had Wall and Beal, and Wall said he couldn’t worry about things – and with the gift of hindsight, how absurd was all of this? There were people with signs in the stands wearing t-shirts that said “KD to DC,” and he thought it was disrespectful to the current team. How absurd does that movement seem in hindsight?”
“I mean, that's what happens when you have a team that hasn't won anything in 35 years: people get crazy,” Landfill replied.
Hindsight also says that it was ‘remarkable’ to think the allure of his hometown would be enough, when KD has ‘liked to be the villain’ and took a deal to go be part of a dynasty and win two rings and go to another Finals instead. And…
“Those Wiz teams were actually pretty good; the 2014-15 team went 46-36 and won a round in the playoffs, which around here is fantastic,” JP said.
All of this came about because the guys were discussing the notion of Jayden Daniels being a franchise savior for the Commanders, but it’s nowhere near as intense as that movement that began not even the year before, but TWO years before Durant became a free agent.
“I totally forgot about that, but I remember the time and I can't lie, JP, I was one of them people thinking he was coming,” Jeff Walker said. “I was all in, man, but we read that very poorly. I think that was the ‘sign of hope syndrome’ where we just wanted to believe any good news that was coming to the team.”
“I’m pretty sure that was also still during the Ernie era, and we all kind of knew, just like when RG3 was with the Commanders and we needed a savior to save us from Snyder, the only possible way that the Wizards could have won when Ernie Grunfeld was in charge was if some Messiah came and saved us, delivered us from Ernie.”
“It’s unfortunate, but any rookie like that, they will forever be looked at as a savior coming into this town, and it will always be pressure,” Jeff said. “And that’s what’s happening to Jayden Daniels.”
Maybe not as much, but it all comes full-circle…