Kevin Durant sent the Brooklyn Nets into a spiral at the beginning of free agency when he requested that the organization trade him. The 33-year-old is arguably the best player in the NBA right now and has four years remaining on his contract.
Once the dust settled, the expectation was that Brooklyn would be able to deal him for a massive haul. Especially given what the Minnesota Timberwolves just paid for Rudy Gobert.
But that hasn’t happened.
There is interest in Durant, of course, but the offers for him have been very muted.
“When the Nets put him on the market, I think [the Nets] thought there was going to be a tremendous bidding war and while there’s a lot of interest, from what I can tell, that bidding war isn’t really hot right now,” ESPN NBA insider Brian Windhorst said this week.
“The teams have made their offers and they don’t really see the need to increase them,” Windhorst continued.
“Now maybe they’ll be a little bit of action at Summer League where NBA executives are gathering the next few days. There could be a restart of action there.”
Specifically, it seems like other teams don’t want to overpay the way they believe Minnesota did.
“The Jazz make this trade with Rudy Gobert last week and get an incredible haul of draft picks. The Nets’ respond by saying, ‘now, the price for Durant just went higher’ and the rest of the league is saying, ‘We don’t think so. We didn’t like that price, we didn’t like that trade.”
It will be fascinating to see how this situation unfolds. The Los Angeles Lakers’ top bid for Durant is a matter of public record. The same is true for the Boston Celtics’ best offer. The Toronto Raptors also continue to hover in the background, but at the moment are declining to throw in one young star.
Will any additional suitors emerge? It’s unclear.
Durant has two big reasons for why he wants out of Brooklyn. Those are unlikely to change. So a trade feels inevitable. But where?
This promises to be a fascinating next few days and weeks. Whatever happens here will drastically alter the trajectory of a lot of NBA teams in 2022-23.
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