Oh how the times have changed.

I grew up watching this Warriors team never believing that they could ever be the top dog. The years of horrible draft picks during the 1990s became normal. Then the years of realizing no big free agent would want to sign here was also just an accepted fact. And hey, the Warriors were just never going to be good.

Yet in only a matter of a few seasons, the Warriors were the top dog. They win a championship. They have the league MVP. They are the talk of the league. Yet all of that was still cool with me because the Warriors did this organically. Pulling off trades. Signing players that were discarded. Building through the draft.

This team to me was a team that had to fight and claw for survival. And they did that leading up to this recent run.

Now Kevin Durant changes all of it.

The Warriors now become ultimate public enemy #1. They signed a megastar free agent. The team was already championship level. Now they’re stacked deep. The whole landscape of the NBA has shifted. Parity is altered. The Warriors at least on paper are on a level like no other.

I never was a Kevin Durant fan. I thought his basketball skills were great but his drive and passion was not as high. But maybe that was a product of playing with the Thunder. Now he’s with a team that has expectations so high with his arrival. The target is on the Warriors’ back with this move.

The team that I thought would be in the cellar all of my life is now the top dog of the league. And how they got there was so different from what I expected.

The Warriors were actually a desirable destination. They didn’t need to add Durant but by now adding him, they are simply going to run the league.

There will be haters and that’s expected now. There will be the loathers who think that the Warriors are just stacking. I hate that my team is viewed this way. But that’s part of the territory of being a top team.

And maybe that’s because I haven’t gotten around to the fact that my favorite team is no longer that garbage team I saw growing up. Times have changed. They’ve changed. I have to change along with it.