While most of us generally expected Kevin Durant to return to the Thunder before shocking us all and signing with the Warriors instead, his now former coach was already thinking that’s what was going to happen. Not that he knew KD would pick the Warriors but in a recent podcast for The Vertical, Donovan did reveal that he didn’t share the same optimism that the rest of us had before Durant’s decision.

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“I don’t know if I ever thought that he was necessarily going to come back,” Donovan said on The Vertical Podcast with Adrian Wojnarowski. “But I thought our meeting went very, very well. I thought it was positive, I thought it was very clear.”

Sounds like Donovan felt that no matter how well the meeting went, he knew he wouldn’t be coaching Durant again. For his credit, he admits not really doing much to recruit him during the season but he hoped focusing on basketball instead of recruiting would be the incentive KD needed to stay.

“I talked to him a lot about the fact that I wanted to help him and our team get better,” Donovan said in reference to meeting Durant last summer. “I didn’t want to get involved in the free agency talk at all, because one, it really was not my place. I didn’t have a relationship with Kevin at all.”

Considering the Thunder came within one game of the NBA Finals, it’s somewhat odd that his own coach still had a feeling he wouldn’t be back but I guess when you feel something in your gut you don’t need more reason than that.

H/T TheScore