So… that didn’t take long. It’s been less than six months since Kevin Durant tabled his trade request and agreed to rejoin the Brooklyn Nets. In that time, the Nets have fired Steve Nash, tried to hire Ime Udoka, actually hired Jacque Vaughn, suspended Kyrie Irving and ultimately traded Kyrie Irving. Now the vultures are circling. The Nets are telling teams that they don’t plan to trade Durant, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, but those same teams are getting their ducks in a row for an eventual Durant pursuit.
It might come before Thursday’s deadline. It might come over the summer. But with the two superstars he recruited to join him with the Nets now gone and Brooklyn’s championship hopes on life support, it’s seemingly only a matter of time until Durant seeks his own exit. But when he does, he won’t be entering quite the same trade market he left last summer.
A few things have changed over the past six months, so let’s reset the stage for what will surely become the league’s next great trade soap opera.
How do Durant’s preferred destinations look?
In a macro sense, Miami and Phoenix are exactly where Durant left them in August: one major piece short of a championship roster. The Heat are 29-25 as of this writing. The Suns are 30-26. Both are probably slightly better than their records suggest due to injury. Neither has the best possible trade package to land Durant. Both have reason to act slightly more aggressively this time around.
The Suns have a new owner in Mat Ishbia. Typically, new owners try to make a splash when they take over, and based on the reporting leading up to the deadline, Ishbia is no exception. In all likelihood, everything but Devin Booker is going to be on the table for Phoenix. The Suns still have all of their first-round picks available for trades.
Cap minutia made DeAndre Ayton much harder to trade over the summer, but at this stage, any interest Brooklyn may have had in him is likely gone thanks to the emergence of Nic Claxton. Mikal Bridges is malleable enough to fit anywhere, but the Nets…
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