While Kevin Durant quietly signed a five-year extension with the Oklahoma City Thunder and spends this summer competing for Team USA in the 2010 world championship, his fellow NBA superstars have taken a different approach to the offseason.

Durant's low-profile contract announcement and willingness to compete for his country have been the lone bright spots in a summer filled with narcissistic, self-serving decisions.

Chris Paul became the latest All-Star to grab headlines. The point guard expressed his desire to be traded out of New Orleans on Thursday.

With Paul wanting to start his own super team like LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh have formed in Miami, is the NBA heading toward a league dominated by a handful of big-market franchises?

The NBA always has struggled with parity. Only seven teams have won titles in the past 27 years, and the Lakers and Celtics have more than half of the NBA championships.

But now the league's superstars are demanding trades to contenders and free agents are fleeing smaller cities to team up with fellow All-Stars.

So how will the Timberwolves, Grizzlies and Bucks compete in a league like this?

Well, the silver lining lies in the humble 21-year-old in Oklahoma City. Durant doesn't have the marketability of LeBron, the cool nickname like CP3 or a championship like Wade, but the Thunder star could be the best player in the league for years to come.

He already has become the youngest scoring champion in NBA history -- averaging 30.1 points a game -- and pushed Kobe & Co. to a sixth game in his playoff debut last season.

Durant is content winning with the team that drafted him instead of searching for a better situation elsewhere around the league.

As most of the NBA's stars are running toward the nearest spotlight, it's reassuring that the league may be dominated for the next 15 years by a modest kid in Oklahoma City.