Kevin Durant just made everyone’s nightmare come true by choosing to sign with the Golden State Warriors. Four stars on one team staring down multiple titles now. This is an opportunity to go down as one of the greatest teams in the NBA but it may have also set off a chain of ugly events to come. There’s absolutely no chance the other owners are happy about this. Super teams are on a rise despite the current CBA being devised to prevent this. With both parties having the opportunity to opt out of the contract next summer, get ready for a 2017 lockout.

Durant’s decision has a lot of implications beyond just shifting the entire competitive balance of the league. Durant just gave more fuel to the owner’s side. This newly bought Golden State team will be the perfect example to use for why the owners want more changes and the fans will rightfully side with them. The CBA (collective bargaining agreement) has failed everybody when four/nearly five stars can get together on one team. We’re all going to have to sit through another uncomfortable offseason where millionaires fight over who gets a larger advantage, owners or players. The players looked like they were set to win the next CBA negotiations. Now with Durant’s new super team you can bet that the owners will hold out and force serious changes. There’s a lot of money at stake and analysts expected the negotiations to wrap up  quickly but this changes everything. Why would owners want to continue down this same path where NBA stars dictate what happens in the league? The owners won a lot of clauses in the last lockout but superstars still rule the league.

This is especially tough on those small market teams. The 2016-17 season has a cap floor of $84.7 million. So small markets teams are forced into the difficult position of having to scrape together an entertaining team in order to prevent money loss knowing they have no shot of winning or landing a star. The new CBA signed after the 2011 lockout was also supposed to limit the draw of big markets but Golden State is now one of the largest markets and San Francisco is one of the wealthiest cities in the country thanks to all the tech companies moving over there. This once again gave them the advantage of being able to market offseason potential to free agents. NBA players are getting smarter about life outside of basketball. They want to go to places where they will get more marketing and investment opportunities. What better area right now than San Francisco? Durant made the choice to get an easy championship but don’t overlook the idea that this involved lots of future money opportunities. Markets such as Memphis and Milwaukee will never have these kinds of opportunities and the already grouchy and irritable owners of the NBA will bring this up during next summer’s negotiations.

Currently five teams in the NBA have 12 out of the 20 best players (Miami, San Antonio, Clippers, Cleveland, and Golden State). Golden State now has four of those guys on one team. How’s that for competitive balance? The rich get richer in the NBA. The NBA gives no incentive for other teams to even try to compete beyond a little extra money from playoff games and more merchandise sales but let’s not kid ourselves here, most of merchandise sales are from star players.

At the end of the day this decision simply adds fuel to the fire. Owners and players constantly want change. Small team owners aren’t going to be allowed to consistently be pushed around by the big guys after investing hundreds of millions into their teams. Everyone wants equal opportunity. Perhaps if viewer interest wanes at the sight of seeing the same team win over and over, the league will look to address this further but right now the league is enjoying the millions of dollars flooding in. The Warriors are up to a $2 billion evaluation with this Durant signing so it’s going to take action from the smaller groups to change things. Petty millionaire arguments will only result in the viewers missing out on more basketball. The system is flawed as it doesn’t benefit either side much. Players should be allowed to go wherever they want but at the same time it dilutes the product. Having the majority of the top players going to one team takes away one of the things that makes sports so great, unpredictability. The NFL is the best modern example of keeping a league unpredictable and entertaining year in and year out. The NBA is limited in stars but it doesn’t help when the majority are on less than half a dozen teams.

At the end of the day Kevin Durant did what was best for his own career and you can’t fault him too much for that but if this is a basketball move as Durant stated in his Player’s Tribune piece then it doesn’t entirely add up. Durant’s team was one win away from the Finals and he put on a terrible performance. His shooting numbers were down across the board and yet he left for a team who already had built a dynasty. Perhaps there was more to this. Perhaps he didn’t enjoy playing with Russell Westbrook as many people around the league claimed. One thing is for sure, you can get used to hearing the phrase “Durant is a bitch” a lot more often now. Fans can demand change by refusing to watch two super teams tear across the NBA for the next season. Owners can form a pact and refuse to trade for Golden State’s players to create the room necessary for Durant. The League should look into new strategies going forward. Despite what the players wanted, there should never be a huge cap boom like this summer. Golden State would have never had this opportunity if the union didn’t create such a huge cap spike. We all know how the next season will play out. It’s what happens after the 2016-17 season that is very murky right now. Durant got everyone’s attention with the move but he may have also irked all the wrong people in the NBA.