The Golden State Warriors are considered the leaders in the clubhouse to sign Kevin Durant in free agency ... if he leaves Oklahoma City. At least, that's what the Warriors apparently believe. As the list of suitors to officially meet with Durant on July 1 trickled out on Friday night, ESPN's Marc Stein dropped an interesting tidbit.

The Warriors believe their chances of securing Durant's services improved with the loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers.

But the Warriors, sources say, increasingly believe their chances of convincing Durant to leave the Thunder after a successful [nine]-season run were enhanced significantly by the fact that Golden State lost the NBA Finals to Cleveland in seven games despite taking a 3-1 series lead.

Source: Kevin Durant to meet with Golden State Warriors, San Antonio Spurs, Oklahoma City Thunder.

Only the Warriors could suffer the biggest collapse in Finals history and come out better -- or feeling better -- in their pursuit of the best free agent on the market.

I'm not entirely sure of the logic here, but the thinking goes that if the Warriors had run the title and Durant jumped ship, he'd be bandwagoning onto the champions. Now he gets to be the one that arrives and puts the Warriors over the top. Even with the Warriors winning 73 games and being one game away (with a lead going into the fourth quarter of Game 7) , the optics of Durant joining some superior force don't look the same after Golden State's defeat.

This is, of course, fairly insane. If Durant wants to join the Warriors because he loves their style of play, or because he feels it gives him his best chance of winning a title (even as a second fiddle) or because he loves great seafood or because he really wants developers around to build his own app or something, then he should do it. But the optics are not going to improve after the Warriors lost the championship. He's going from the MVP leader of one of the best teams in the league in OKC, where he said openly "I'm tired of being No. 2." to Steph Curry's spot-up shooter. And no matter what role the Warriors carve out for Durant, that's what Durant would be. He'd be Robin to Curry's Batman. A younger, less established, less versatile player would be the alpha dog to Durant, and that's not even approaching the complicated dynamics that Draymond Green's attitude creates.

But how it looks to Durant is what matters.

Meanwhile, the bigger problem the Warriors probably face is he level of distaste and disdain that grew between Durant and the Warriors over the course of the Western Conference finals. Those two teams wound up genuinely disliking each other. There can be a shared respect between the two sides but that's different from Durant wanting to go sign up with the team that Durant has to feel he left off the hook after being up 3-1 on Golden State less than a month ago.

We'll see what happens, but one thing is clear The Warriors are serious and confident in their belief that Durant will want to take a long look at them on July 1.

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Will Kevin Durant choose the Warriors? USATSI