If you contrast the way Grantland Rice looked at sports and how we view sports today, Kevin Durant’s decision to abandon the Oklahoma City Thunder for the Golden State Warriors is clear.

We made him do it.

Many years ago, Rice was the premier voice in sports journalism, his words ranking up there with the deeds of many of the men he covered, like Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey. He believed players should be paid for their success but had a world view of sport many fans today have lost.

In a poem called “Alumnus Football,” Rice wrote what became an oft-quoted line that seems sadly out of step with today’s state of affairs in sports.

“Keep coming back, and though the world may romp across your spine,

Let every game’s end find you still upon the battling line;

For when the One Great Scorer comes to mark against your name,

He writes — not that you won or lost — but how you played the Game.”

Compare that to the news that bombards us today.

The Warriors didn’t mount a miraculous comeback to beat Durant’s Thunder in the Western Conference finals after trailing, 3-1. Durant and the Thunder blew it. Durant “choked” despite scoring 27 points with seven rebounds while shooting 52.6 percent and playing all but 140 seconds of Game 7. Durant averaged the same 28.4 points per game in the postseason that he had in the regular season (28.2 actually). He had two off-shooting nights in Games 5 and 6 but still scored 69 points in those defeats.

Yet he was a loser in a culture that has become so obsessed with championship rings that Rice’s point of view is considered laughable by the madding crowd.

Less than two weeks later, when the same thing happened to the Warriors against LeBron James and the Pips, Steph Curry and Klay Thompson “choked,” or so many believe. And when down 3-1 to the Thunder, talking heads on radio and TV across the country insisted if Golden State didn’t win the championship, its remarkable 73-win regular season (an NBA record) would be null and void.

A few years ago, the Bruins had the best regular-season record in the NHL but failed to win the Stanley Cup. They were widely branded as losers.

The Patriots go 18-1, but that one loss comes in the final game, so their season became a disappointment to many.

This is what sport has become, whether at the professional level or hockey parents pounding the glass as 9-year-olds skate around desperate to please families that have lost all sight of what sport is supposed to be about.

As a reminder, see Grantland Rice: “He writes — not that you won or lost — but how you played the Game.”

“He” still might, but “we” do not.

In the NFL, there is one winner and 31 losers. The numbers change in baseball, hockey and basketball, but that viewpoint doesn’t. And you mock Durant for doing all he can not to be among the “losers?”

Durant hinted at what he was feeling as he struggled to pick between a town where he’d repeatedly shown his loyalty and the reality of what the great sportswriter Robert Lipsyte labeled “SportsWorld” in a prescient book, written in 1975, about the perversion of sports.

Lipsyte argued sports had become a national religion and an ethic that misdirected its practitioners’ efforts and perverted our values. Durant hinted at that when he told Sports Illustrated recently, “Our world revolves around championships. Who won the championship? Who will win the championship? If you’re not the champion, you’re a loser. If you’re not first, you’re last.”

Too much of the world around him agrees. Yet when he does what we suggest he must — pursue a championship at all cost — he is judged disloyal, disrespectful, gutless and a cheater just for signing with the team most believe has the best chance to win next season.

“I was disappointed, like I was disappointed when LeBron went to Miami,” Charles Barkley told ESPN Radio. “Kevin is a terrific player, he’s a good kid. But just disappointed with the fact that he weakened another team and he’s gonna kind of gravy train on a terrific Warriors team.

“Just disappointed from a competitive standpoint because just like it meant more to LeBron to win one in Cleveland, it would mean more to Kevin to win one in Oklahoma than it would in Golden State.”

Perhaps, but if he never won one in Oklahoma City, Durant would become Jim Kelly, forever labeled a loser because he led the Bills to four Super Bowls but never won.

Durant did many things for Oklahoma City beyond basketball, including writing a $1 million check within hours of the devastating tornados that leveled a wide swath of Moore, Okla. He is by all accounts a nice guy and a great player.

That didn’t change because he caved to the pressures of SportsWorld, a place so obsessed with winning it labels everyone else a loser. It’s a mindset that gets good coaches fired and pressures others to cheat. It’s a mindset that makes PEDs worth risking, trophies more important than fun and too often turns 9-year-olds into puck hogs, ball hogs, and kids who forget Rice was right and those obsessed with winning are not.

In the end, Kevin Durant couldn’t take a chance on losing. Many former athletes railing against him didn’t do the same only because they couldn’t. Now guys like Durant can.

Get used to it.

After all, we’re the ones who keep telling them if they don’t win it all, they haven’t won anything.