Kevin Durant-Nets trade saga: 5 winners and 5 losers from a whirlwind two months
In roughly 55 days, Kevin Durant managed to surprise us several times. He surprised us on June 30 when he requested a trade from the Brooklyn Nets despite having signed a four-year extension in 2021. About two weeks ago, Durant met with team owner Joe Tsai and said he’d stay if general manager Sean Marks and coach Steve Nash were fired. Tsai tweeted that the team was backing Marks and Nash, showing a sign of solidarity with the very people Durant said needed to go for him to stick around.
Then on Tuesday, in a joint statement between the Nets and Durant’s production company, The Boardroom, the two sides announced:
“We have agreed to move forward with our partnership. We are focusing on basketball, with one collective goal in mind: build a lasting franchise to bring a championship to Brooklyn.”
— Brooklyn Nets (@BrooklynNets) August 23, 2022
This was a film noir twist in a summer full of rumors, a lot of innuendoes and very little action. The Nets were asking for everything on the menu when it came to a trade package return. Throw your first-round draft picks, your pick swaps, your good young players and any All-Star 25 years old or younger into a trade package sample platter, and you could acquire the soon-to-be-34-year-old Hall of Fame lock. Not many teams could even begin to put that kind of a package together.
For everybody traversing the desert of content during a weak free-agency class and the offseason, the Durant trade talk and updates were the oasis off in the distance. As with any high-profile situation in the NBA, there are winners and losers. This Kevin Durant Trade Saga-palooza was no different. Let’s examine some winners and losers from the entire affair:
Winners
Sean Marks
Durant told Tsai that Marks and Nash needed to go for him to stay, and Marks is standing taller than ever. He’s not just the general manager; he’s listed as an alternate governor for the Nets in their staff directory. He couldn’t be more Teflon after this summer. Marks was tasked with cleaning up Billy King’s mess following Mikhail Prokhorov’s demand that the Nets take over Gotham City like they’re wearing a purple suit and clown makeup. He did exactly that and managed to build a culture with Kenny Atkinson to attract superstar free agents like Durant and Kyrie Irving.
Tsai openly backed Marks during all of this, and now he has to feel like his job is virtually untouchable. Like Masai Ujiri in Toronto or Pat Riley in Miami. Marks will get another chance to trade Durant if this stuff goes poorly, and we’ll see how he navigates the Irving situation as he enters a contract season. But Tsai trusts Marks and believes in him. Marks didn’t back down to Irving in extension negotiations, and he didn’t let Durant dictate the terms of the franchise in a trade ultimatum.
Marcus Smart, Desmond Bane, Jaren Jackson Jr., Brandon Ingram and Scottie Barnes
These are the players reportedly deemed untouchable in trades that would have netted their respective teams Durant. The Memphis Grizzlies wouldn’t part with Desmond Bane (the most improved player as deemed by NBA Most Improved Player Ja Morant) or Jaren Jackson Jr. (who is fantastic but also always injured). They were going to dangle Ziaire Williams and Dillon Brooks instead, likely knowing that wasn’t going to get it done. The New Orleans Pelicans had one of the best trade packages possible but stood their ground on not including Brandon Ingram. Ujiri wouldn’t part with the reigning NBA Rookie of the Year Scottie Barnes, instead letting OG Anunoby be the carrot in a potential deal.
Then there’s the Marcus Smart aspect of it all. In those other situations mentioned above, you can understand the potential of a youth movement not being easily jettisoned — even for Durant. Barnes is 21 years old. Jackson is 22. Bane and Ingram are both 24. Smart is going to turn 29 years old this season. Yes, he just won NBA Defensive Player of the Year, but there are a lot of people who thought Robert Williams III would have won instead if he didn’t get hurt. Smart being untouchable was a very Danny Ainge-esque line-in-the-sand move by Brad Stevens, the Celtics president of basketball operations. If you don’t include him in a deal for Durant, then there might not even be three players in the league you would do it for.
Minnesota Timberwolves … I think?
The Timberwolves traded for Rudy Gobert, and it seemed to skew the idea of what an acceptable trade market would be for Durant. They acquired Gobert for four first-round picks, a pick swap and a player who was just drafted in the first round this offseason (along with a bunch of role players). The Wolves wanted to shake things up for themselves to shake up the hierarchy in the West. Accidentally, they also created a standard for trade packages that most teams couldn’t approach for Durant (we’ll see if it also prevents the Utah Jazz from getting even more for Donovan Mitchell). The Wolves managed to keep Durant out of the Western Conference because of this.
It’s the Wolves, so it could backfire on them in myriad ways. But for now, they kind of did something good to affect the league and keep some player movement of others in check.
Internet trade machines and the people who love them
You know the websites that have the tinkering machines where you can plug in just about any kind of deal imaginable and see if the collective bargaining agreement allows it. Those websites had to do crazy numbers the first week of free agency, the kind of traffic social media influencers would sacrifice their dignity for. They’ll now cool off until we either get Durant back on the trade block or find a new disgruntled superstar to move in a future potential transaction.
The transaction turns the NBA from an eight-month calendar to a 13-month calendar. That’s right; it adds another month to the mix. Power down your trade machines for now. Your Rube Goldberg four-team trade scenario machinations will have to happen with another player and team that aren’t Durant and the Nets … for now.
Kyrie Irving, Ben Simmons and James Harden
Irving and/or Ben Simmons did not want to have to play for a Nets team that no longer had Durant on the roster. Sure, a trade would’ve meant a lot of pieces coming in, and there would have been plenty of possibilities for those pieces to be quite good. However, it was never going to match the talent and presence of Durant. Simmons carrying a team without Durant would’ve put a crazy amount of pressure on him. If Durant gone meant a less serious Irving in tow, Simmons probably wasn’t going to want to deal with that either.
As for Irving, there were plenty of rumors early on that maybe Durant was trying to get away from a friend he teamed up with in Brooklyn. Instead, this has made their bond, friendship and partnership in Brooklyn look even stronger. Irving has a contract year now, and Durant’s presence gives him a lot more options for another payday, even if it doesn’t come in the form of a four-year deal.
James Harden gets to be a winner here because he was ejected far before he stuck around for the circus that the Nets have become. He gets to build in Philadelphia instead of plugging dam holes in Brooklyn.
Losers
Steve Nash
Nash didn’t get fired from this whole debacle, so you could consider him a winner. But the target is on his coaching seat now, and any mistakes are going to be amplified. That clock is ticking louder and louder, like one of those confusing TikTok videos where people are dressed normally as they bang their fist on one side of a door then they’re dressed like a Marvel character on the other side. I was more impressed by the sweatsuit you had on than the Captain America fit.
As for Nash, he’s backed by Tsai and the front office for now, but coaches tend to be the easiest members of the organization to replace. We’ve had NBA Coach of the Year winners get fired before the hardware was shipped to their homes. Nash already had a bunch of questions about his style, his system and his decisions on the sidelines. We’ve had reports and rumors that Nash isn’t someone Irving and Durant are comfortable with as the coach. At some point, the Nets falling short again means the pink slip for the two-time MVP. He was going to have a spotlight on him this season already and now it’s even brighter.
Jaylen Brown
The Boston Celtics star has to be used to this by now because there have been trade rumors about him for years. We had questions about the fit with Jayson Tatum before the Celtics turned their season around and came within two victories of the NBA title. Brown going through trade rumors might be normal, but there’s a certain point where enough might be enough. You can’t blame the Celtics for looking at a potential swap involving Brown and Durant. It’s impossible to argue that Durant isn’t an upgrade over Brown, but you could still question fit on some level with him and Tatum versus what we’ve seen with the growth of the Tatum-Brown duo.
If Brown has a tough start to the season, the trade rumors will be blamed, and overanalyzing his demeanor and body language will become the work of social media sleuths. The Celtics worked through some internal stuff that bubbled over to the media last season, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that gets fixed again. Before this offseason, Brown was never compared to what Durant was doing. Now that comparison will find its way into plenty of talking points. Brown can handle a lot of this, but this could wear on him. He’ll just have to block out any noise and make sure to save his big nights for when Boston faces the Nets.
The national television schedule … for now
The league pump-faked on throwing the Nets into a lot of national television action. That can be flexed at any point, and we may see the league work with the broadcast partners to work Brooklyn back into some doubleheaders. Last season, the Nets were on ABC, ESPN and TNT a total of 26 times. They were one of the league’s most nationally broadcasted teams with good reason, considering the expectations they had going into the campaign. That number was cut to 13 games. If you include NBA TV into the mix, the Nets went from nearly half their games (38) having that spotlight to just 23. Still, a lot of games compared to most teams, but the league didn’t want to risk Durant being gone.
On the flip side of this, I should have had the YES Network as a winner with more and more people tuning into them on NBA League Pass because ESPN, ABC and TNT don’t regularly have the Nets scheduled. Maybe this makes NBA TV the biggest winner, but I’ll just keep the national schedule as a loser for now.
Kevin Durant
One would think Durant letting it be known he wants a new home would’ve resulted in a mad dash to acquire him and his contract for the next four years. Instead, we had a bunch of teams wading into the pool to take the temperature of the water. They left the pool feeling it was far too frigid to go swim in the transaction waters … you know what? This analogy is getting away from me, but you know what I mean. Teams dipped their toes in the water, and it wasn’t the right temperature. This would’ve been unheard of if you told people a year ago Durant wouldn’t have enough serious interest on the trade market after requesting a new home.
It makes sense. The money is hard to match in a deal, even in the offseason. Not many teams have the treasure chest of first-round picks to send out in a trade. Not many teams have the young players the Nets would want back in the deal. And ultimately, Durant is going to tweet through it all and continue to own his own social media platforms and narratives. It just seems odd that Durant couldn’t get what he wanted here. Stephen Jackson once signed an extension and managed to get himself traded almost immediately. Paul George pulled this off in getting from OKC to the Clippers.
Durant didn’t quite have the pull or the behind-the-scenes string-pulling to make it happen. There are plenty of reasons a deal didn’t get done, but plenty of people will look at just the surface and walk away shouting that Durant doesn’t have star power in this league when it comes to creating his pathway. Or at least, he didn’t this time around and has to stay in a place he doesn’t want to be, playing for a coach he doesn’t want to coach him.
Brooklyn Nets
The drama will be there all season. The spotlight will be brighter than us trying to examine if they were contenders throughout last season. Every peak in the season will be dismissed as fleeting, and every valley will be emphasized as cratering. I’m not sure how often we’ve seen a star player demand a general manager and a coach be fired to appease him, but most of the time, these unresolved trade requests end in disaster and an eventual trade. For every situation like Kobe Bryant trying to get out of Los Angeles in 2007, you have 10 situations like Jimmy Butler trying to get out of Minnesota.
The Nets have the talent to overcome this, and Durant is damn special on a basketball court. But nobody will take the Nets seriously as contenders this season unless Durant shrugs it off, Irving fully commits and Simmons is back to the best version we saw in Philadelphia. But hey, they brought in T.J. Warren this summer! That’s fun!
Of course, this could all be a ruse to catch us off-balance for Durant to now get traded. Don’t turn your back on the offseason.
Kevin Durant-Nets trade saga: 5 winners and 5 losers from a whirlwind two months
In roughly 55 days, Kevin Durant managed to surprise us several times. He surprised us on June 30 when he requested a trade from the Brooklyn Nets despite having signed a four-year extension in 2021. About two weeks ago, Durant met with team owner Joe Tsai and said he’d stay if general manager Sean Marks and coach Steve Nash were fired. Tsai tweeted that the team was backing Marks and Nash, showing a sign of solidarity with the very people Durant said needed to go for him to stick around.
Then on Tuesday, in a joint statement between the Nets and Durant’s production company, The Boardroom, the two sides announced:
“We have agreed to move forward with our partnership. We are focusing on basketball, with one collective goal in mind: build a lasting franchise to bring a championship to Brooklyn.”
— Brooklyn Nets (@BrooklynNets) August 23, 2022
This was a film noir twist in a summer full of rumors, a lot of innuendoes and very little action. The Nets were asking for everything on the menu when it came to a trade package return. Throw your first-round draft picks, your pick swaps, your good young players and any All-Star 25 years old or younger into a trade package sample platter, and you could acquire the soon-to-be-34-year-old Hall of Fame lock. Not many teams could even begin to put that kind of a package together.
For everybody traversing the desert of content during a weak free-agency class and the offseason, the Durant trade talk and updates were the oasis off in the distance. As with any high-profile situation in the NBA, there are winners and losers. This Kevin Durant Trade Saga-palooza was no different. Let’s examine some winners and losers from the entire affair:
Winners
Sean Marks
Durant told Tsai that Marks and Nash needed to go for him to stay, and Marks is standing taller than ever. He’s not just the general manager; he’s listed as an alternate governor for the Nets in their staff directory. He couldn’t be more Teflon after this summer. Marks was tasked with cleaning up Billy King’s mess following Mikhail Prokhorov’s demand that the Nets take over Gotham City like they’re wearing a purple suit and clown makeup. He did exactly that and managed to build a culture with Kenny Atkinson to attract superstar free agents like Durant and Kyrie Irving.
Tsai openly backed Marks during all of this, and now he has to feel like his job is virtually untouchable. Like Masai Ujiri in Toronto or Pat Riley in Miami. Marks will get another chance to trade Durant if this stuff goes poorly, and we’ll see how he navigates the Irving situation as he enters a contract season. But Tsai trusts Marks and believes in him. Marks didn’t back down to Irving in extension negotiations, and he didn’t let Durant dictate the terms of the franchise in a trade ultimatum.
Marcus Smart, Desmond Bane, Jaren Jackson Jr., Brandon Ingram and Scottie Barnes
These are the players reportedly deemed untouchable in trades that would have netted their respective teams Durant. The Memphis Grizzlies wouldn’t part with Desmond Bane (the most improved player as deemed by NBA Most Improved Player Ja Morant) or Jaren Jackson Jr. (who is fantastic but also always injured). They were going to dangle Ziaire Williams and Dillon Brooks instead, likely knowing that wasn’t going to get it done. The New Orleans Pelicans had one of the best trade packages possible but stood their ground on not including Brandon Ingram. Ujiri wouldn’t part with the reigning NBA Rookie of the Year Scottie Barnes, instead letting OG Anunoby be the carrot in a potential deal.
Then there’s the Marcus Smart aspect of it all. In those other situations mentioned above, you can understand the potential of a youth movement not being easily jettisoned — even for Durant. Barnes is 21 years old. Jackson is 22. Bane and Ingram are both 24. Smart is going to turn 29 years old this season. Yes, he just won NBA Defensive Player of the Year, but there are a lot of people who thought Robert Williams III would have won instead if he didn’t get hurt. Smart being untouchable was a very Danny Ainge-esque line-in-the-sand move by Brad Stevens, the Celtics president of basketball operations. If you don’t include him in a deal for Durant, then there might not even be three players in the league you would do it for.
Minnesota Timberwolves … I think?
The Timberwolves traded for Rudy Gobert, and it seemed to skew the idea of what an acceptable trade market would be for Durant. They acquired Gobert for four first-round picks, a pick swap and a player who was just drafted in the first round this offseason (along with a bunch of role players). The Wolves wanted to shake things up for themselves to shake up the hierarchy in the West. Accidentally, they also created a standard for trade packages that most teams couldn’t approach for Durant (we’ll see if it also prevents the Utah Jazz from getting even more for Donovan Mitchell). The Wolves managed to keep Durant out of the Western Conference because of this.
It’s the Wolves, so it could backfire on them in myriad ways. But for now, they kind of did something good to affect the league and keep some player movement of others in check.
Internet trade machines and the people who love them
You know the websites that have the tinkering machines where you can plug in just about any kind of deal imaginable and see if the collective bargaining agreement allows it. Those websites had to do crazy numbers the first week of free agency, the kind of traffic social media influencers would sacrifice their dignity for. They’ll now cool off until we either get Durant back on the trade block or find a new disgruntled superstar to move in a future potential transaction.
The transaction turns the NBA from an eight-month calendar to a 13-month calendar. That’s right; it adds another month to the mix. Power down your trade machines for now. Your Rube Goldberg four-team trade scenario machinations will have to happen with another player and team that aren’t Durant and the Nets … for now.
Kyrie Irving, Ben Simmons and James Harden
Irving and/or Ben Simmons did not want to have to play for a Nets team that no longer had Durant on the roster. Sure, a trade would’ve meant a lot of pieces coming in, and there would have been plenty of possibilities for those pieces to be quite good. However, it was never going to match the talent and presence of Durant. Simmons carrying a team without Durant would’ve put a crazy amount of pressure on him. If Durant gone meant a less serious Irving in tow, Simmons probably wasn’t going to want to deal with that either.
As for Irving, there were plenty of rumors early on that maybe Durant was trying to get away from a friend he teamed up with in Brooklyn. Instead, this has made their bond, friendship and partnership in Brooklyn look even stronger. Irving has a contract year now, and Durant’s presence gives him a lot more options for another payday, even if it doesn’t come in the form of a four-year deal.
James Harden gets to be a winner here because he was ejected far before he stuck around for the circus that the Nets have become. He gets to build in Philadelphia instead of plugging dam holes in Brooklyn.
Losers
Steve Nash
Nash didn’t get fired from this whole debacle, so you could consider him a winner. But the target is on his coaching seat now, and any mistakes are going to be amplified. That clock is ticking louder and louder, like one of those confusing TikTok videos where people are dressed normally as they bang their fist on one side of a door then they’re dressed like a Marvel character on the other side. I was more impressed by the sweatsuit you had on than the Captain America fit.
As for Nash, he’s backed by Tsai and the front office for now, but coaches tend to be the easiest members of the organization to replace. We’ve had NBA Coach of the Year winners get fired before the hardware was shipped to their homes. Nash already had a bunch of questions about his style, his system and his decisions on the sidelines. We’ve had reports and rumors that Nash isn’t someone Irving and Durant are comfortable with as the coach. At some point, the Nets falling short again means the pink slip for the two-time MVP. He was going to have a spotlight on him this season already and now it’s even brighter.
Jaylen Brown
The Boston Celtics star has to be used to this by now because there have been trade rumors about him for years. We had questions about the fit with Jayson Tatum before the Celtics turned their season around and came within two victories of the NBA title. Brown going through trade rumors might be normal, but there’s a certain point where enough might be enough. You can’t blame the Celtics for looking at a potential swap involving Brown and Durant. It’s impossible to argue that Durant isn’t an upgrade over Brown, but you could still question fit on some level with him and Tatum versus what we’ve seen with the growth of the Tatum-Brown duo.
If Brown has a tough start to the season, the trade rumors will be blamed, and overanalyzing his demeanor and body language will become the work of social media sleuths. The Celtics worked through some internal stuff that bubbled over to the media last season, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that gets fixed again. Before this offseason, Brown was never compared to what Durant was doing. Now that comparison will find its way into plenty of talking points. Brown can handle a lot of this, but this could wear on him. He’ll just have to block out any noise and make sure to save his big nights for when Boston faces the Nets.
The national television schedule … for now
The league pump-faked on throwing the Nets into a lot of national television action. That can be flexed at any point, and we may see the league work with the broadcast partners to work Brooklyn back into some doubleheaders. Last season, the Nets were on ABC, ESPN and TNT a total of 26 times. They were one of the league’s most nationally broadcasted teams with good reason, considering the expectations they had going into the campaign. That number was cut to 13 games. If you include NBA TV into the mix, the Nets went from nearly half their games (38) having that spotlight to just 23. Still, a lot of games compared to most teams, but the league didn’t want to risk Durant being gone.
On the flip side of this, I should have had the YES Network as a winner with more and more people tuning into them on NBA League Pass because ESPN, ABC and TNT don’t regularly have the Nets scheduled. Maybe this makes NBA TV the biggest winner, but I’ll just keep the national schedule as a loser for now.
Kevin Durant
One would think Durant letting it be known he wants a new home would’ve resulted in a mad dash to acquire him and his contract for the next four years. Instead, we had a bunch of teams wading into the pool to take the temperature of the water. They left the pool feeling it was far too frigid to go swim in the transaction waters … you know what? This analogy is getting away from me, but you know what I mean. Teams dipped their toes in the water, and it wasn’t the right temperature. This would’ve been unheard of if you told people a year ago Durant wouldn’t have enough serious interest on the trade market after requesting a new home.
It makes sense. The money is hard to match in a deal, even in the offseason. Not many teams have the treasure chest of first-round picks to send out in a trade. Not many teams have the young players the Nets would want back in the deal. And ultimately, Durant is going to tweet through it all and continue to own his own social media platforms and narratives. It just seems odd that Durant couldn’t get what he wanted here. Stephen Jackson once signed an extension and managed to get himself traded almost immediately. Paul George pulled this off in getting from OKC to the Clippers.
Durant didn’t quite have the pull or the behind-the-scenes string-pulling to make it happen. There are plenty of reasons a deal didn’t get done, but plenty of people will look at just the surface and walk away shouting that Durant doesn’t have star power in this league when it comes to creating his pathway. Or at least, he didn’t this time around and has to stay in a place he doesn’t want to be, playing for a coach he doesn’t want to coach him.
Brooklyn Nets
The drama will be there all season. The spotlight will be brighter than us trying to examine if they were contenders throughout last season. Every peak in the season will be dismissed as fleeting, and every valley will be emphasized as cratering. I’m not sure how often we’ve seen a star player demand a general manager and a coach be fired to appease him, but most of the time, these unresolved trade requests end in disaster and an eventual trade. For every situation like Kobe Bryant trying to get out of Los Angeles in 2007, you have 10 situations like Jimmy Butler trying to get out of Minnesota.
The Nets have the talent to overcome this, and Durant is damn special on a basketball court. But nobody will take the Nets seriously as contenders this season unless Durant shrugs it off, Irving fully commits and Simmons is back to the best version we saw in Philadelphia. But hey, they brought in T.J. Warren this summer! That’s fun!
Of course, this could all be a ruse to catch us off-balance for Durant to now get traded. Don’t turn your back on the offseason.
