I Asked 9 NBA Players How To Leave A City – Their Answers Will Shock You!

Note: This piece is a work of fanfiction. All thoughts are imagined. No players were actually interviewed.

If you don’t understand nuance and need it explained to you, this is a piece about different ways I feel about leaving Washington, DC for New York after living in DC for four years, told through the perspectives of various NBA players who have famously (or infamously) left their teams.

Damian Lillard

Insist on staying. Let the sunsets pass you by and let your lease expire. Do not pack anything up until you absolutely have to. When the time comes, tell everyone you planned it this way all along. Don’t miss it. Try not to laugh. Try not to be disappointed when your supposed superteam hires Doc Rivers. It’s still Dame Time in a different time zone, isn’t it? Chuck shots. Miss them all. Try not to laugh.

Sometimes, you miss Portland. You miss CJ. You miss Nurk. You wish you could have saved Caleb. You wish you could have won it all. Sometimes, you feel like you wasted ten years trying to grind. Other times, you wish you never ran from it. What is success if not grown from hard work? What is hard work if not struggle? What is struggle if not the Portland Trail Blazers during Damian Lillard’s Reign of Terror?

You shrug. You chuck shots. You try not to laugh. Wherever you go, there you are, Damian – forever a first-round exit. Maybe you’re the problem – you really don’t think you are, though. You’re a good guy with perpetual bad luck. Regardless – are you happy now?

Kevin Durant

Chase something bigger. Look around at your problems and laugh – you’re escaping them now! You’re showing them! Make rash decisions. Sign leases. Sign contracts. Sell all your stuff on Facebook Marketplace. You’re free. You always have been. You have soul and spirit and autonomy. Create something better with those long legs and trigger fingers of yours. 

Leave Oklahoma City. Leave Golden State. Leave Brooklyn. Consider leaving Phoenix. Consider coming home to DC once and for all. Dream of the way the doors close on the Red Line, about concerts at the 9:30 Club, about Wizards games and resting your head on the window on the 96, of walking laps around the Cathedral on muggy summer days, of flying over the Washington Monument on your way to land at DCA, of the Portal to Hell in Bethesda. Dream of yourself and Steph and Klay and Draymond getting drinks after the invite to the fucking White House. Dream of how you showed them around. Dream of opening night, someday, having your hometown team to yourself, if they can get their act together.

Keep dreaming, Kevin. Your hometown team will not bring you success before your inevitable retirement.

Sure, you’re a ring chaser. Sure, you’re a snake. That’s nothing to you. They’ll all still root for you on Team USA and clamor to get noticed by you on Twitter. They’ll still hate-watch your highlights. Your teammates will still love you. Smile to yourself. Breathe in the desert air.

Still, dream of home.

Ben Simmons

Burn all your bridges. Smile with a sharpness. Grab a sledgehammer.

John Wall

Go kicking and screaming. You gave this city your life – your everything, god damn it – and for what? Just busted knees and maybe a jersey retirement if you’re lucky? It’s not like you shifted the culture or anything. Someday, you’ll come back, and you’ll see the ghosts you left, the promises left unfulfilled, the promises broken, the things out of your control. It’s not like they’ll miss you.

Play for the Rockets. Play for the Clippers. Do not retire – rather, fade. Play in Europe. Play in China. Dream of go-go and mambo sauce. Dream of U Street and Adams Morgan. Dream of Bradley Beal and Marcin Gortat. Dream of the playoffs. Dream of Chinatown before Ted Leonsis got his hands on it. Spend your whole life trying to go back.

Or don’t.

DeMar DeRozan

Go tearfully. Go painfully. But still, go.

Mikal Bridges

Stay there, in a sense.

Leave Cam in Brooklyn. Shuffle around the two-bedroom apartment you share with him, trying not to make a sound. Look into his eyes when you pass each other in the hallway. Notice the gaping space between you. Feel the discomfort. Don’t move out. Hope you can fix it with him. Pray you have it in you.

Long for the desert, for the pool and the backyard and for your mom and your dogs and the house you shared with Cam and Dario and Frank the year you almost won it all. Catch yourself hugging your own body. Feel your skinny arms around your ribcage and feel your heart pounding. There is something in there, Mikal. It is up to you to channel it.

Seek comfort. Join your college drinking buddies at your crosstown rival – not your crosstown rival, of course; the Sixers don’t have one – but the Nets’ crosstown rival. Blind yourself under the hot halogen lights of Madison Square Garden. For once, you are not the enemy. For once, you are not the warden. Cling to your youth. Change nothing. This is the life.

Klay Thompson

Insist on staying. Let the sunsets pass you by and let your lease expire. Do not pack anything up until you absolutely have to. Blindside Steph. Blindside Draymond. Blindside yourself. How do you leave the only city you’ve ever known? How do you leave your teammates? Where the hell are you going to dock your boat in Dallas?

Soon enough, your last sunset in San Francisco will come and go. You’ll find a house in Dallas and you’ll get on the plane and you’ll pray you have one more in you. You went zero for ten in an elimination game. You’re a fraud. You’re a snake. You pray you have one more in you. Wherever you go, there you are, Klay – someone else’s second fiddle, this time with lingering knee pain and aging joints. Are you happy now?

Donovan Mitchell

Breathe a sigh of relief. Wish your former teammates well. Get the hell out of there.

Ersan Ilyasova

Leave with ease, if life takes you that way. Falsify your documents. Seek a better life in a country where you won’t be a refugee. Change your age if you have to, but I doubt you ever did. 

Land in Milwaukee. Time after time, find your way home. Brave Atlanta summers and Orlando traffic and Philadelphia fans and Utah’s salty air if life takes you that way, but return to Milwaukee winters like clockwork. 7, 77, you are a Buck for life with no ring to show for it. Think back on how you got here. Let them question you. Sink into a snowbank. Fade.