Kevin Durant can't believe it.
Here he is, the NBA's most coveted free agent, sitting through pitch after pitch at a manse in the Hamptons, pondering his professional future. On this July day, it's the Golden State Warriors' turn to state their case.
Rather than leave the heavy lifting to the suits, the core of the Warriors team that only recently dispatched Durant's Oklahoma City Thunder from the Western Conference Finals—Stephen Curry, Andre Iguodala, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green—shows up to give the lanky Beltway native a taste of what awaits him on the west coast.
"I was shocked that those four guys came to meet me a couple of days ago," Durant says at his first press conference as a Warrior. "The team won 73 games and a championship before. I didn't think they would be interested in a player like me because they've had so much success. But to see them together, they all walked in and it looked like they were holding hands. It was just a family."
More like royalty, really. Five All-Stars. Two regular-season MVPs in Durant and Curry. A Finals MVP in Iguodala.
With Durant in tow, the Warriors are the NBA's newest Evil Empire. They have the talent to turn a fierce competition into a seven-month coronation.
In his mind, though, Durant is joining a family, one whose bonds were forged and tightened, in part, over a summer, before the Warriors went from league laughingstock to NBA champions.
From an abysmal 2011-12 Golden State Warriors season—the team's 17th trip to the lottery in 18 years—springs a promising bounty on draft day: Harrison Barnes (pick No. 7), Festus Ezeli (pick No. 30) and Draymond Green (pick No. 35). The day after the 2012 draft, the three newest Warriors arrive in Oakland and hit the ground running.
Barnes, a McDonald's All-American co-MVP in high school and All-American at North Carolina, is a natural. A physical specimen at 6'8", he oozes potential on and off the court.
"When I saw him in person, I was like, 'This kid's got size, he can shoot it...OK, alright...alright...OK. I like this,'" says former Warriors assistant coach Pete Myers.
Ezeli is a project. A 7-foot tree trunk with stone hands and a sponge of a mind, fine-tuned during his four years at Vanderbilt. He goofs around, keeps things light, but when it's time to get serious, he snaps to attention.
"He's a worker," Myers says. "He came in, an hour-and-a-half workout was nothing to him. He breezed through it. Probably one of the strongest kids I've ever been around coming out of college like that."
Green is a leader, a manchild who absorbs all stresses—a hard foul, a technical, a body blow—to protect his teammates and win a game. A prototype of Tom Izzo's Michigan State program if ever there was one: versatile, hard-nosed, fearless, hungry. An unconventional specimen in terms of shape and skill set.
"He's somebody that if you looked at him, in college he was a little pudgier," Ezeli explains, "but like a dancing bear, he was very light on his feet."
They all have as much to prove as the Warriors do.
"Coming in, they weren't like a deer in headlights," former Warriors guard Charles Jenkins says. They carry themselves like veterans. They ask questions. They share their opinions. They take charge during drills.
"In terms of being a professional from a young age, all those kids had it," Myers says.
For three weeks, Monday through Thursday, morning until evening, ex-Warriors head coach Mark Jackson and his staff work their players hard. They focus on the fundamentals. They pick apart every little detail to the point where the players think, "I have to do this because if I don't do this right, he's going to be on me."
Defensive guru Darren Erman—with Jackson and Myers in support—implores the young guys to use their voices, to call out assignments and positions on defense, to communicate. The coaches don't just run the shell drills; they participate themselves, filming everything and breaking down the tape like they would an actual NBA game.
"We just drilled the s--t out of everything, man, made them verbalize it," Myers says. "They caught on to it, and it was like—it was clockwork after that."
The players accept the instruction and ask for more, devouring every lesson like Fourth of July hot dogs.
"We weren't satisfied," Ezeli says. "We'd be out there until we got it right. That was on our own terms. I thought that was very telling for the kind of basketball players we had on hand."
All the while, Jackson keeps telling his pupils, "We're not those old Warriors. We're not that old team."
At the start of 2012 Las Vegas Summer League, the Warriors don't know what they have on their hands.
"We would think we had terrible practices just because of the way we would beat each other up," Ezeli says. "We didn't know how good we were until we played the first game in summer league."
The Warriors announce their Las Vegas arrival with a 90-50 flattening of the Los Angeles Lakers in the cozy confines of Cox Pavilion. They hold the Lakers to 27.1 percent shooting, force 15 turnovers and block three shots.
Barnes, in his first professional game, drains all four of his three-pointers. Green finishes a point and a rebound shy of a double-double.
"[Green] was yelling at guys from day one, like, 'Man, let's go,'" says Frank Robinson, the elder statesman of that Golden State summer-league squad at 28 who most recently played in Turkey. "The type of player he is, you want to play for him or play with him."
Thompson shines the brightest of all. He scores 24 points, dishes out five assists, drains 6-of-8 from three. He looks like a former lottery pick with 66 pro games and 10 20-point outings already under his belt.
"Klay's swagger was unreal," former Warriors forward Kent Bazemore says. "He had it all figured out. He killed."
The next night, Thompson and the Warriors are still hot. He hits 4-of-6 from three, pulling up from well behind the three-point line. The rest of the team shoots 5-of-9 behind the arc. Golden State rolls past the Denver Nuggets 95-74.
Jackson keeps watch over the big picture. He lets his aides run the show but offers input at every turn. He gives Thompson permission to head home after the game.
"Alright, that's enough," Jackson tells him. "You did well enough. We don't need you anymore."
Once Thompson is discharged, Bazemore jumps into the flow of what players describe as a training-camp-like environment. Two-a-day practices and team meetings on top of five games (and five shootarounds) in nine days.
"The intensity of the practices is different," Bazemore says. "Those guys were going so hard for it to be a day before a game."
When the Warriors schmooze with their competition off the court, their opponents pepper them with questions about their preparations like concerned parents.
Why did you have a training camp before summer league?
Why were you home working out beforehand?
Why have you been grinding for a month already?
That's ridiculous! You guys are doing too much!
"We thought we were just putting in the work," Ezeli says. "I was more proud of that than anything. We didn't just take it for granted."
With so much on their plates, the players refrain from doing Vegas. Xbox in the rooms over stints at the casino. Sound sleep over nightclub soirees.
"You'd hear guys would be talking like, 'We were there last night, it was jumping,'" Bazemore recounts. "I would just smile and be like, 'Man, you're in trouble then.'"
The Warriors have their fun. Ezeli cracks jokes. Barnes rubs shoulders with Vegas entertainers.
Green pranks his teammates while they sleep.
They bond over crab legs at the Mandalay Bay buffet and greasy hot dogs at Nathan's Famous, like dorm mates at a college dining hall. This is a business trip, more basic training than freshman orientation. Everything they do—and don't do—is geared toward basketball
"It wasn't about hanging out. It wasn't about going out. None of that," Ezeli says. "We came in, and we worked, and we kicked everybody's butt."
The victories keep coming for the Warriors—and not by accident.
"We grinded out so much [in practice] that when the games came, it was kind of easy," Ezeli says.
Golden State is as much a summer-league anomaly in games as in practice. While other players jack up shots and clamor for roster spots, the Warriors move the ball, more often than not to the man with the hot hand.
"My job is to get you open," Ezeli says. "If you're making shots like that, I'm trying to find you every time. That summer league, that's all I did."
With Thompson gone, Barnes becomes that guy for Golden State. The Warriors funnel 17 shots his way during a 65-62 win over the Miami Heat, who are led by Norris Cole, at the Thomas & Mack Center. Two nights later, he drops 20 points opposite Jimmy Butler as the Warriors clamp down on the Chicago Bulls 66-57.
Stephen Curry isn't around to cheer on his teammates. He's back in the Bay, rehabbing his surgically repaired ankle, but he still finds time to chime in from afar.
Other Warriors come out to support. David Lee rides with the team on the bus to the first game. Jarrett Jack and Carl Landry, both new to Golden State, show their faces.
The players' biggest backers, though, are themselves.
"We would just go crazy for each other," Bazemore remembers. "We just rooted for each other. It was like seeing a brother out there do well. You saw the work these guys put in behind the scenes."
The Warriors end their stay in Las Vegas with an 80-72 win over the New Orleans Hornets. Barnes, Bazemore and Jenkins all score in double figures. Golden State finishes a perfect 5-0, the 10th team in summer-league history to go undefeated and the only one to do so that year.
The Warriors are the de facto champions, a makeshift family forged in the fires of the desert and the heat of competition. To celebrate, Lee treats the team to its first and only night out in Sin City.
"You're in a perfect world because everyone's still friends. Everything is innocent," Bazemore says. "We had that going for us. We were such a close-knit group. We did pretty much everything together. It just showed on the floor when we played with each other."
After summer league, the team disburses. Most of the players sign overseas or with NBA D-League teams.
Thompson, Green, Barnes, Ezeli, Jenkins, Bazemore and Jeremy Tyler reconvene at the practice facility in early September. They're joined by the veterans—for lifting sessions, for conditioning work, for pickup games that feel more like practices.
"Once training camp got there, it was time to roll," Jenkins says.
Come October, everyone, regardless of rank and file, gets the same treatment from Jackson's coaching staff that the young guys endured in June and July. They respond the same way.
"When you've got even the last guy buying into things, whether he's going to play or not, that's a good team," Jenkins adds.
The pieces fit. Jackson and his assistants dole out roles that suit everyone's skills. Golden State wins 47 games, enough to secure the franchise's first playoff spot since 2007, the "We Believe" year. At the trade deadline that February, the Warriors deal Jenkins to the Philadelphia 76ers and Tyler to the Atlanta Hawks.
The sixth-seeded Warriors upset the Denver Nuggets in six games. They push the San Antonio Spurs, the eventual Western Conference champions, to six.
The next year, they win 51 and send Bazemore to the Lakers but lose to the Los Angeles Clippers in seven games during the first round.
The rest is well-established NBA history: Jackson gets the ax. Steve Kerr replaces him. The Warriors win 67 games during the 2014-15 regular season and 16 more in the playoffs to claim their first NBA title in 40 years. They follow that up with a league-record 73 victories this season.
"They started from scratch with a bunch of young guys, and now they're the best team in the world," Robinson says.
The Warriors might still be despite ceding a 3-1 lead to the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA Finals.
Barnes is gone, now a max player with the Dallas Mavericks. So is Ezeli, who will partner with the NBA's other Splash Brothers, Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum, in Portland. Bazemore, long ago known best for waving towels in Golden State, is one of Atlanta's $70 million men.
Their memory might soon be wiped away by Durant's arrival. In Durant, the Warriors add not only one of the game's pre-eminent players, but another superstar capable of carrying Golden State in the event Curry—or Thompson, or Green—succumbs to injury. He is, among other things, the NBA's biggest and best insurance policy.
Even though Durant, unlike his new teammates, never suited up for the Dubs in the Las Vegas Summer League.
Josh Martin covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.