The blame for all of this mostly falls on the shoulders of three people
Russell Westbrook, for playing an inefficient and selfish brand of basketball that is not conducive to winning, being told this for years, and refusing to change anything about his game. He is the most selfish basketball player I have ever seen in my life and to me the most selfish player of all time. Even after KD left and said exactly why he left Russell Westbrook looked to make no changes. What did he do instead? Start forcing it more and engineering this whole triple double thing which sells the facade of him not being selfish because "how can he be selfish if he's getting assists" but that's far from true. He's constantly dominating the basketball instead of deferring to players who are better than him.
Sam Presti, for being in love with one style of building a team so much that it caused him to make the worst trade of all time, over pay Steven Adams, and then keep drafting the same kind of player over and over in hopes that they can make them into a shooter like what happened in San Antonio. This roster is pretty much what it is now and outside of trading PG or Westbrook material changes can't be made, but he needs to look in the mirror and shoulder some of the responsibility.
Clay Bennett, for crying poverty when they were the fifth most profitable team in the league that season and coming off the heels of a NBA Finals trip, and saying that he didn't want to pay the tax which caused the worst trade in NBA history to happen in the first place.
There are other parties who should be blamed here but it starts with these three people.
For my money I will say Westbrook should shoulder the brunt of this because for all the mistakes that Presti and Bennett made, you still had Kevin Durant and he left because of Westbrook. He ran Kevin Durant off.
