Durant Trade Watch (CONT')
Brooklyn is still trending toward a spectacular end to the Kevin Durant/Kyrie Irving Era ... even with no deal in sight yet to find a new home for KD with only six weeks to go until training camp
During summer league in Las Vegas, one of the most well-connected team executives I speak to regularly insisted to me that, based on what he was hearing, Kevin Durant was more apt to retire than play again for the Brooklyn Nets. This was in early July.
I told the tipster that I simply couldn't believe that. I was a loyal subscriber to the theory that Durant The Hooper loves playing basketball way too much to adopt such a stance.
Now? More than a month later? Attaching the R-word to Durant still comes across as serious hyperbole, but it is certainly getting easier to envision him refusing to report to training camp when the Nets get back together in six weeks for Media Day (Sept. 26) and their first practices of the new season (Sept. 27).
If Durant hasn't been traded by then, there is a growing expectation in league circles that he will continue trying to cause as much of a ruckus behind the scenes to try to prod the Nets into lowering their asking price at last to facilitate a deal. If it wasn't apparent by now, he really wants that trade to Phoenix or Miami or maybe even Boston or Philadelphia, no matter what it does to his reputation when he hasn't played a single game yet under the four-year, $194 million contract extension signed in August 2021.
Audacious and shocking and disheartening as it all seems for the state of the modern NBA to see Durant at the center of such a storm, we shouldn't be surprised. When the Nets signed Durant and Kyrie Irving as a package deal three summers ago, clearly not enough thought …
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