The Brooklyn Nets have one of the greatest players in NBA history to trade, but might not be able to deal him. Or at least make a deal that makes sense.
Two weeks after Kevin Durant rocked the NBA with his demand to be traded, the 11-time all-NBA selection remains a member of the Nets and the off-season continues to move ahead.
After a flurry of activity early in the process when some in-the-know league types were predicting a resolution to the situation in a matter of days, not weeks, it appears that a stalemate is taking shape.
You have the Nets, who have Durant under contract for four more seasons and a roster built to suit his strengths, on one side and on the other you have one of the league’s greatest players, who wants out, but has no true leverage to make it happen.
Meanwhile, the market for Durant has proven more difficult to stir up than might have been anticipated.
Teams like the Toronto Raptors may continue to lurk, ready to jump in if the Nets get itchy and the price is right, but they could be waiting for a good long time, and there’s a growing understanding that their time may never come.
Nets general manager Sean Marks has no choice but to make a Durant trade a signature transaction, one that matches or exceeds the haul that teams have received in previous blockbusters — lots of juicy, unprotected future first-round picks, an all-star or future all-star along with a high-end starter or elite role player, at minimum.
Selling low on a player who remains one of the most dynamic players in the sports would leave a mark that would ruin Marks’ career as well as set the Nets back in embarrassing fashion.
But here’s the problem: as no less authority than Jerry West — arguably the most accomplished executive in the history of the sport — put it the other day: Trading Durant and appearing like you got fair value is nearly impossible.
“This is one of the greatest players we’ve ever seen,” said West in a recent radio interview: “And for him to want out? I can see why, but … my best guess is he’s not going to get traded. You can’t give enough to get a guy like him.
“And I see Utah makes a trade with Minnesota and I said ‘Oh my gosh, the assets they got for a terrific defensive player [Rudy Gobert], what would Kevin Durant command? He’s one of the greatest to ever play the game, period.”
This is where the possibility of Durant becoming a Raptor — or wearing any other jersey in the ‘22-23 season — seems to be getting slimmer by the day.
On one hand, the news Thursday that the Phoenix Suns — believed to be Durant’s preferred destination — signed their restricted free agent centre Deandre Ayton to a four-year deal for $133 million should, in theory, strengthen the Raptors’ position.
The expectation was that Ayton would likely have to be part of a Durant deal — even if it meant he was routed to a third team to ease salary cap complications. But now that he’s signed his extension, he can’t be traded for six months — so until Jan. 15 — and can’t be traded without his consent for a year.
The Ayton signing doesn’t preclude a Durant deal in itself, but it makes it more challenging for Phoenix and perhaps limits the kind of return the Nets will be expecting. That’s the kind of scenario that gave some credence to the Raptors’ hope of emerging as dark horse winner in the Durant sweepstakes.
But the larger issue remains: The Raptors want to trade for Durant so they can contend for a championship over the four years they have him under contract, so any deal they make with Brooklyn has to reflect that.
And on that basis it’s hard to see how Toronto manages a deal that satisfies both the Nets’ need to achieve the highest possible return for one of the greatest players in the game, and the Raptors’ — or any team hoping to deal for Durant — need to maintain a core that Durant can help lift to a title.
A title-winning Raptors team would (likely) need to include both Durant and Pascal Siakam, and there’s no chance Toronto would part with Scottie Barnes, both for what he can provide on the floor now and the foundation he provides the franchise for the next decade or more.
Conversely, why would the Nets make a trade in which they didn’t get one or both of Siakam and Barnes?
All of which reflects why the likelihood of Durant being traded seems to be getting slimmer by the day. Durant wants to win and the Nets have him under contract for four more years. The team they have — which includes holdovers Kyrie Irving, Ben Simmons, Joe Harris, Seth Curry, Patty Mills as well as recent quality additions like Royce O’Neal and TJ Warren — would remain a strong favourite to emerge from the Eastern Conference, potential chemistry issues aside.
And while we’ve become conditioned to superstars’ trade requests being honoured almost as a routine, it’s worth noting there a plenty of examples of them not being realized, and both the player and the existing team being the better for it. Back in the summer of 1993, Hakeem Olajuwon requested a trade from the Houston Rockets and threatened to sue the team over a suspension the previous season. The trade never happened, and Olajuwon went on to lead Houston to consecutive titles in 1994 and 1995, cementing his legacy as an all-time great.
In the summer of 2007, Kobe Bryant, frustrated at the Lakers; malaise in the years after Shaquille O’Neal was traded, went public with a trade request. Los Angeles tried to accommodate Bryant — for a moment it looked like he would be traded to Chicago — but in the end Bryant remained a Laker, ultimately winning his fourth and fifth titles in 2009 and 2010.
And as for trade requests that did happen? Current Raptors president and vice-chairman Masai Ujiri would need no reminder — given he was the general manager in Denver at the time — that when Carmelo Anthony requested a trade from the Nuggets in the summer of 2010, the star didn’t get moved until the trade deadline in the winter of 2011 — and that was with the threat of Anthony leaving for nothing as a free agent looming.
Durant doesn’t have that leverage and if the Nets are wise, they’ll be in no rush to accommodate a trade request that doesn’t serve their best interests.
It leaves the Raptors — and the rest of the NBA — waiting for a deal that may never happen.
