Circa July 2016 and thousands of Cleveland folks line the streets to greet a group of highly skilled and athletic men who just delivered the first title in one of America’s four big sports leagues to the city since 1964. The Cleveland Cavaliers had done the impossible to overcome a 1-3 series deficit to beat Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals in a seven-game series.
Led by one of basketball’s greatest players of all time, LeBron James, and the most skilled point guards of his generation, Kyrie Irving, the Cavaliers beat a Warriors team that won a record 73 of 82 games in the regular season.
While LeBron and company basked in the immortal glory of the Cavs first ever and only NBA title at the time of writing, the Warriors, like every great organization, looked to the future after that epic collapse and plotted their next move.
That move would lead to the biggest shock player departures likely of all time when Golden State’s top hierarchy including Steph Curry managed to convince Kevin Durant to ditch Oklahoma City Thunder for the Warriors.
Adding to the hysteria surrounding Durant’s move to the Warriors was the backdrop of Durant’s Thunder team collapsing late in the Western Conference Finals series after taking a 3-1 series lead to lose in Game 7 and miss out on progressing to the NBA Finals.
Joining the team that beat Durant’s Oklahoma side was widely condemned as a “weak” move on the part of the superstar player so much so to the point where Durant’s exceptional play for the Warriors are still largely valued lightly.
Durant led Golden State to two NBA titles and won two NBA Finals Most Valuable Player titles; he would have won a third straight title had he and Klay Thompson not suffered major injuries in the 2019 NBA Finals against Toronto Raptors.
However, NBA legend Walt Frazier believes Durant’s titles with the Warriors come with an asterisk attached to them and makes him rank the Phoenix Suns player low in the all-time player list. After doing what Kevin Durant did for a team that challenged and went to the Big Dance only to miss out on winning it all for several years, Harry Kane walked away from Tottenham Hotspurs to join Bayern Munich.
Like the Warriors who dominated the NBA from 2015 to 2019, Bayern Munich is the unquestioned dominant force in the Bundesliga that has yielded 11 straight league title wins. There is a solid argument to be made that Bayern Munich is the establishment and the Bundesliga is Bayern Munich. Joining such a force to make them a more dominant side is quite a not so admirable title-chasing move to fill the only gap in England’s captain’s locker.
As a player, Kane represents the most complete striker in world football as a throwback central striker who is versatile to play the “modern way” where he operates as a forward who can play as a creative midfielder and in some cases as a winger who scores goals-a wing forward. The 30-year-old showed off his skill set by grabbing a goal and registering an assist in Bayern’s 4-0 win over Werder Bremen to open the season.
For the record, Tottenham scored 70 goals in 38 league games last season with Kane scoring 30 while Bayern scored 92 goals in 34 league games.
Extrapolating Kane’s production across a full season in a league that has defenders always set up with a high line and prone to quick counter attacks means the Spurs legend is assured at least 35 goals in the league should all variables stay same.
However, for all the great accolades and hardware (two goal king awards and assist award and Spurs all time lead goal scoring record), Kane has no title to boast of and that prompted his move to “Germany’s Team”.
Winning titles with Bayern is easy as advertised in bagging an 11th league title in a row even when it didn’t mean to win it with Borussia Dortmund gift wrapping the title to Bayern on the final day of the 2022-2023 season. Even in the face of losing the German Super Cup to a Dani Olmo hat trick, Kane is all but assured of winning at least one title and that is enough to get him the last thing missing in his career.
Though Durant and Kane have made “weak moves” to get titles, Kane’s iteration is sure to be more palatable than Durant’s and won’t affect his standings in the all-time greats list.
This would be the case should Kane aid Bayern win the title they really want to win on a yearly basis and that is the UEFA Champions League. Winning the German Cup, Super Cup and Bundesliga largely means nothing to Bayern hence the termination of Niko Kovac and Julian Nagelsmann’s contracts after both men won the Bundesliga in their first seasons as head coach.
Unlike Kevin Durant whose Golden State team won before he joined the team and won after he left, Kane’s Tottenham Hotspurs aren’t realistically positioned to get to the Champions League final as it did with Kane or even win a title despite the impressive start under new manager Ange Postecoglou.
However, winning the Champions League wipes out all the negative narrative asterisks attached to Kane’s move to Germany and helps build his legacy as an all-time great.
Being a true legend in a team sports setting is quite a challenge since the athlete needs to overly meet the individual benchmarks while ensuring those skills translate into team success. It is for these reasons that players who have never won the World Cup including pre 2022 Lionel Messi, don’t fit into the G.O.A.T conversation.
As such, Kane could score big on the “very difficult to pull off double act” of winning as an individual and as a team and that is what separates him from Kevin Durant.