Kevin Durant Is The r/Antiwork Superstar of the NBA

Over the last couple of years, I have become very detached from the NBA. The left-wing politics and lack of competition have turned me off.

The Milwaukee Bucks boycotted an NBA playoff game in 2020 after the shooting of Jacob Blake, the Kenosha, WI resident who sexually assaulted a woman, resisted arrest, and pulled a knife on a cop. It was a staged protest against the alleged racial injustices facing blacks in America. However, when Adam Silver, Joseph Tsai, Jonathan Greenblatt, and the ADL attacked Kyrie Irving's freedom of speech and religion, NBA players did exactly what Ann Coulter told LeBron James to do. They shut up and dribbled.

The NBA's absence of defense and stick-to-itiveness also irritate me. Teams scoring 100 points in a game and players dropping 50 have become far too commonplace. There have been 20 50-point performances already this season. There were 8 in the entire 2015-16 season. Players put in more work deciding what they wear to the arena than on the defensive end. Thanks to shoe deals and free agency, players bounce from team to team on a whim.

The latest NBA megastar to jump ship (again) is Kevin Durant. On Thursday (February 9), after the Brooklyn Nets traded Kyrie Irving to the Dallas Mavericks, KD was moved cross country from Brooklyn to the Phoenix Suns. It will be his fourth franchise (not counting the Seattle Sonics moving to Oklahoma City). Durant is walking down the yellow brick road LeBron James and Kevin Garnett paved. 

This is why nobody in this era can touch Michael Jordan. He won more championships in a tougher, more competitive era of basketball with one team. While making less money. Case closed. None of them are in the same zip code as Mike. (Although, I give Steph Curry a lot of props for spending his whole career thus far with the Warriors.) Partly, it's not their fault. They are products of the antiwork culture brooding today.

It shouldn't come as a surprise as the country gets further away from biblical principles, the more steam the antiwork movement gains. The book of Proverbs speaks often about hard work.

Proverbs 10:4 "He becometh poor that dealeth with a slack hand: but the hand of the diligent maketh rich."

Proverbs 12:11 "He that tilleth his land shall be satisfied with bread: but he that followeth vain persons is void of understanding."

Proverbs 14:23 "In all labour there is profit: but the talk of the lips tendeth only to penury (poverty)."

Antiwork is the adopted child of anarchism, a philosophy that rejects all forms of control and authority. That includes the authority of God. Anarchism hails from the same family tree as communism. One of the earliest anarchist philosophers was German activist Wilhelm Weitling, who was also one of the early masterminds of communism. In fact, his communist doctrines preceded the rise of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. He was a member of the Forty-Eighters, a small but vocal group of disaffected Germans who migrated to the United States. They set for new territory to continue their political conquests. In 1850, he released a monthly journal titled Die Republik der Arbeiter. Historians have called the Forty-Eighters the "lunatic fringe" of the extreme left.

The Forty-Eighters live on today through a subreddit called r/Antiwork. The goals of the Reddit sub-community are very straightforward:

"A subreddit for those who want to end work, are curious about ending work, want to get the most out of a work-free life, want more information on antiwork ideas and want personal help with their own jobs/work-related struggles."

This snapshot posted on the subreddit received nearly 4,000 upvotes.

One of the superstars in the antiwork movement is Nina Turner, a former Cleveland city councilwoman and former Senate member representing Ohio. She currently works for The Young Turks. A quick tour of her Twitter timeline shows her communist sympathies. Turner is what Oprah would be as an elected politician. Free insulin, free cell phones, free healthcare, free childcare, free education, free housing. No one pays or works for anything.

The irony of the antiwork movement is the amount of work it took to build a society where they can freely voice their displeasure of work. Long days and nights were spent trying to create Reddit and mold it into the social media powerhouse it is today. It took difficult labor (and money) to build the homes people want for free today. Roughnecks fell to their death building skyscrapers. Irishmen were sometimes buried alive when making sewers and digging canals. Chinese migrants were blown up building the transcontinental railroad. Blacks died during the creation of roads and other infrastructure.

The antiwork movement metaphorically spits in the face of all these men, just like the current crop of NBA athletes metaphorically spit on the accomplishments of past generations.

Today's NBA stars are closer to Nina Turner than Shaquille O'Neal. There was some ring chasing going on in the 90s. Charles Barkley tried and failed. Nevertheless, the attempts among the top stars were few and far between, with most being unsuccessful. You were rewarded for working hard to build up the franchise that drafted you. Some of the most revered players in NBA history played for minimal teams and were grinders on both sides of the ball. Reggie Miller. Kobe Bryant. Patrick Ewing. Malone. Stockton. "Pistol" Pete. Kareem. Magic. Bird. Shaq.

"Guys are getting real lazy and real cute and then they want guys like me and Big Shot Bob to show them some respect."

Those aren't my words. Those words came out of Shaq's mouth.

"Trust me, if I knew it was okay to team up after Houston busting my ass in 1994, I would have went and played next to Hakeem. I would have went to go play with Tim Duncan and Dave Robinson. But I was like nope. I'm licking my wounds and I want to beat these dudes and we did."

Kevin Durant and many of today's players would rather be friends with and play next to the person who busted their ass in competition. Can you imagine MJ wanting to join the Detroit Pistons? Or Reggie Miller working a trade to the Bulls or the Knicks?

"If you don't enjoy putting in work….something is wrong with you… That's the difference in playing 2 years in the league and 10+ years," tweets soon-to-be-Hall-of-Famer LaMarcus Aldridge.

When Kevin Durant plays his first game for the Phoenix Suns, he should don the number 48. It represents the antiwork, communist-sympathizing, Marxist mentality elite athletes have adopted.