Kurtenbach: Steph Curry and the Warriors are winning the breakup with Kevin Durant

Kevin Durant didn’t leave the Warriors because he wanted to play a different role on the court, or because the Warriors weren’t winning enough.

No, he left because of ego.

He wanted his “own” thing in Brooklyn. He wanted one of the few markets larger than the Bay Area — New York — to himself.

How’s that working out for him?

Three seasons after Durant’s exit, the Nets are still title-free and the second-most important team in their city. One can even make the argument that the Warriors are closer to winning a title than the Nets.

Make no mistake about it — when Durant willingly left behind the greatest basketball force ever assembled in the modern era, this became a race: Who could return to true greatness first?

And Durant and the Nets squandered an impressive head start. Yes, Durant was out for the first year of his Brooklyn tenure, but he ensured that the Nets throw the dead weight of D’Angelo Russell on the Warriors’ lap.

The Warriors were, understandably, in disarray after Durant left. You’d be searching for answers, too, after the best scorer on the planet left your team without a good reason, and then Steph Curry broke his hand in October, leaving you with a tired team and Russell.

It took a couple of years for Golden State to figure things out, but they have done just that. The Warriors’ organizational leaders — Joe Lacob, Bob Myers, Steve Kerr, and Curry — might be boisterous and self-congratulating at times, but they’re smart. They were always going to figure it out.

This season, the Warriors are one of the best teams in the NBA — a squad that has the true look of a contender in the Western Conference. The Dubs boast a clear identity, enviable depth, and impeccable vibes.

Yes, for the first time since Durant’s penultimate year in blue and yellow, the Dubs are fun. That translates onto the court, too. The Warriors’ ball movement, player movement, and playful attitude should be the envy of the league.

And all this is without Klay Thompson, who provides no downsides and will amplify all these good things the Dubs are doing.

The Dubs are not a perfect team — we know what that looks like around these parts — but the core of Curry, Thompson, and Draymond Green know better than any group in the NBA (and as well as any group in history) how to win big postseason games.

The longer the Dubs have success this season, the more we’re going to wonder why they can’t win the Western Conference.

I wouldn’t bet against the Dubs’ Big Three.

But Durant did.

Perhaps Durant and his steadfastly tortured existence would have prevented such a mood from materializing in San Francisco, but who would not want to be part of what the Warriors have going right now?

The Warriors are playing winning ball. They’re stable. They have a championship air about them and have earned back the respect of the entire NBA.

Durant’s exit from Golden State was deemed to be inevitable at the moment of his departure. That — like all of the other drama related to Durant’s tenure in the Bay — was an outcome that Durant created.

But how can you not wonder what the Warriors would be with Durant still in the mix?

How can Durant not wonder?

Especially when you consider that the Slim Reaper is having to carry the self-imposed expectations of a team that’s never won anything of importance but presented itself as the big dogs on the block from Day 1. At this point, Durant is having to play arguably the best offensive basketball of his career to keep Brooklyn above water.

Kyrie Irving decided he didn’t want to show up to work, James Harden has struggled after the NBA instituted rules that prevented him from cheating the game as he had in Houston, and those buyout guys that fill out so much of Brooklyn’s roster — well, they were available for a reason, it seems.

The Nets are a good team because they have Durant but they’re anything but a juggernaut.

And the vibes? Not great.

The Nets can’t even break through in their own market. The Knicks — an inferior team in every way — are the real story in New York. Always have been, always will be.

Now, Durant has a tremendous amount of power over the city’s second team — he received what he sought — but you have to wonder if the power is worth the responsibility.

It’s evident that Durant liked some of the things going on in the Bay. He plucked Steve Nash, his personal coach with the Warriors and a close friend of Kerr, to be the Nets’ head coach. He also enjoyed the superteam concept, as the Nets brought over James Harden via trade and a bevy of stars who wanted to sign on the cheap.

But Nash seems in over his head in corralling the Nets’ egos — there’s a scattershot nature to Brooklyn’s play — and Irving is sitting out the whole season as he takes a stand against … a bunch of stuff with marginal relation to vaccines. It’s hard to keep up with his nonsense.

The Nets can’t replace Irving. So Durant is down one of his team’s three stars because someone watched too many YouTube videos, with no resolution in sight.

Does that sound like a winning environment to you?

Not to compare Wiggins to Irving on the court — it’s no contest — but don’t forget, Wiggins was vaccine-hesitant, too, and facing the same arena ban in San Francisco as Irving willingly accepted in New York.

But Wiggins ultimately got the jab. The Warriors did their best to convince him to become vaccinated, but they never browbeat him and ultimately didn’t ruin their relationship with him during that holdout process.

The race will continue — this passive-aggressive rivalry won’t go away until Durant picks a new team. Tuesday’s game between the Warriors and Nets will serve as a notable checkpoint.

But we don’t need a game to determine which team is winning the breakup.