The Kevin Durant saga is finally starting to heat up, a month on
By Jim James
Hello, welcome back to the blog, and I’m told there’s a 0.015% chance that someone new to the blog will read this, so if you’re new, welcome. Finally, about 40 days on from the Kevin Durant trade request, I’m finally starting to say “woah, we might actually see a trade here”. Let me explain.
Earlier Today, Kevin Durant told Nets owner Joe Tsai that it was “Me or Them” referring to Steve Nash and Sean Marks. This evening, Joe Tsai tweeted this:
“Our front office and coaching staff have my support. We will make decisions in the best interest of the Brooklyn Nets.”
I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what this means. Joe chose Nash and Marks. With a Celtics trade heating up, signs look good on a trade. However, this doesn’t mean a trade is definitely coming.
You see, Kevin Durant signed an extension almost a year ago today, that saw him Pen a deal until 2026. How much power has he really got at this point? If the Nets really want, they can force him to see out the length of his contract with Brooklyn and enter Free Agency in 2026 at the age of 37, and as anyone who followed the Cristiano Ronaldo saga this summer found out, finding a team at the age of 37, even for a legendary player, is rather difficult.
Sure, Durant can whine and complain to Joe Tsai, to the NBA, to the NBPA, on Twitter, but the Nets can keep him for 4 more years if they want. That would be the equivalent of Jimmy Butler’s saga out of MINNESOTA ending this summer. 4 years is a long time.
Back on the flip side, the Nets may not want to keep KD for a long time. As previously mentioned, he’ll whine and complain to anyone who’ll listen, he’ll be a bad locker room influence, and keeping his contract and attitude would delay any plans for Brooklyn until near the end of the decade. It would be like the Raptors finally starting over with a roster that still included Bargnani, Calderon, James Johnson and Ed Davis in the 2017 offseason. That didn’t happen, and they won a Championship in 2019. The right thing to do was a reset in the Early 2010s, and to eventually get a contending roster for 3-4 seasons.
Enough about the Raptors, if the Nets do ship off Durant this offseason, where would he go? The favourite, right now, it seems, is Boston, who are thinking about a package centered around Jaylen Brown. The Nets say they would deplete the team who traded for Durant of their assets. Here is a possible trade then:
After the Suns’ gave the huge contract to DeAndre Ayton, they appear to be out of the race, so the other options are old faves Miami and Toronto. We already covered them last month though, so you can check it out there.
That’s all I have. We’ll Have more news soon, hopefully. I’m Jim James, until next time.