Who won the Kevin Durant trade saga?
Who won the Kevin Durant trade saga?
No one and everyone. But especially Kyrie.
Good morning. Let’s basketball.
Caesar Is Bored, Henri-Paul Motte, Late 1800s
And just like that, following my Tuesday morning lament over the pace of the Kevin Durant trade demand saga, the drama seems to be done.
In case the image isn’t resolving well on your phone, it’s from the Nets’ official account, credited to Sean Marks and it reads:
Steve Nash and I, together with Joe Tsai and Clara Wu Tsai, met with Kevin Durant and Rich Kleiman in Los Angeles yesterday. 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.
Three notes on the 53-word statement itself:
The graphic includes both the Brooklyn Nets logo and the logo of The Boardroom, which is KD’s media network brand. @Boardroom retweeted the post from @BrooklynNets. On the Boardroom home page, the news appears in a headline box referring to the company’s daily newsletter, wedged between headlines about the Billboard Hot 100 charts and a Serena Williams chat with Meghan Markle.
The construction of the first sentence in the statement is intriguing. “Steve Nash and I, together with [the Tsais], met with [Team Durant].” One imagines that a PR pro took the first stab at writing this, and everyone mentioned had review rights on it. I just find the construction creating three camps — Nets management identified as Marks and Nash, Nets ownership identified as Joe and Clara Wu Tsai, and the Durant contingent identified as KD and Kleiman — telling and fascinating after recent reports that Durant wanted Marks and Nash gone if he was going to stay, and given Joe Tsai’s public support of Marks and Nash. The framing speaks of an alliance between the separate House of Marks/Nash and the House of Tsai in dealing with the House of Durant. Sorry yes, I’m back in Westeros for 10 weeks.
The Nets’ tweet hit at 11 AM ET exactly. (Scheduled tweets for the win!) Shams Charania did not get the scoop early: he tweeted at 11:01 AM ET. Woj retweeted the Nets’ statement. It’s interesting that the parties involved all agreed not to leak this to the media … and stuck to that agreement!
So that was a weird little 8-week drama. News broke that Durant had demanded a trade at the end of June, as free agency prepared to open. Reports suggested that Nets were exploring a trade but asking for Jupiter and its satellites. Reports suggested that Durant pulled the “them or me” card in August. And now, a detente. A partnership. Weird little drama.
Where does it leave everyone?
Is this a win for Sean Marks?
Yes, unambiguously, the result is a victory for the general manager of the team. Rare is the team executive who survives a coup attempt from a top-25 all-time player like Durant. But Durant’s demands were so bizarre and untenable that Marks basically just planted his feet and stuck. There’s no way that the Tsais replace Marks before next summer, and only then if the Nets truly crash and burn (again). Meanwhile, Brooklyn has a highly talented team that should, barring further dramatics, be a legitimate threat (if not quite a contender) in the East.
Is this a win for Steve Nash?
The whole drama is a huge loss for Nash, given that Durant — who eventually had believed got Nash the job in the first place — hit the coach with the “him-or-me” ultimatum during the saga. We’re a long way from this memorable moment!
Durant’s reported ultimatum raised further scrutiny on Nash’s tenure as coach (which hasn’t exactly been illustrious) and, one imagines, tore whatever bond existed between the two. Nash survived this round of dramatics and will surely begin the season as the Nets’ head coach. But given that Durant will remain in town, Nash is immediately on the hot seat. Assuming no other major asterisks come into play, the first person to take the fall at this point, member of The Partnership or not, is Nash.
Jacque Vaughn is the Nets’ associate coach and next-in-line if Nash is removed midseason, for what it’s worth.
Is this a win for the Tsais?
Facing a potential roster-imploding crisis, they navigated the drama to bring a top-10 (at absolute worst) current player back into the fold instead of retooling around Ben Simmons and Cam Thomas. YES. This is a win. An enormous win. The Tsais handled this exquisitely by mostly staying quiet, by communicating directly with Durant and Kleiman, and by defending their management team when push came to shove.
Is this a win for Kevin Durant?
I don’t think anyone has changed their mind about Kevin Durant during this saga, with the exception of perhaps some Nets partisans who are mad he tried to flee with four years on his contract. They will come around the first time he drops 32 on 8/12 shooting. If you were bewildered and upset by Durant’s personality and career path before the trade request, you probably feel the same now. (And you’re probably in Durant’s mentions, if a quick perusal is any guide.) If you found Durant’s unique style interesting, this is just another chapter. If you unconditionally support Durant’s right to do anything he wants in the name of self-interest, this is an example of that working out.
This is all to say that I don’t buy that this saga will damage Durant’s legacy in any way. A subset of the NBA fandom has been mad at KD since July 2016. I don’t think that subset has grown substantially due to the ill-fated trade demand. It’s certainly another chapter in what has been a … non-traditional path for Durant. It’s interesting, it will likely be remarked upon by future generations, much as some are now bringing up Kobe Bryant’s fruitless 2007 trade demand. But nothing actually happened here: no one got fired, no one got traded. It was a blip, and in the grand scheme it will likely be reflected as a blip.
While I don’t think it will have a lasting impact on how the broader fandom views Durant, I do think training camp might be a little uncomfortable! But it’s also not altogether clear that Durant cares that interactions with Nash, for example, might be awkward for a bit.
I will say that if winning a championship in 2022-23 is Durant’s top goal, this resolution hurts that goal. Teaming up with Devin Booker and Chris Paul or Jayson Tatum and Robert Williams III or Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo or Pascal Siakam and Fred VanVleet or (hilariously) Joel Embiid and James Harden would have given KD a better shot at the ring than Kyrie Irving and Ben Simmons. But Durant doesn’t seem as purely ring obsessed as many fans, so it’s unclear whether that motivation matters more than broader on-court success for the player and team. And frankly, did it ever really seem like Durant wanted to leave Brooklyn itself? In the end, the sense I get (which may be off base) is that KD was dissatisfied with the state of the Brooklyn Nets circa late June 2022, sought change, found none, and re-accepted the status quo.
In all, this isn’t a win for Durant but it’s also not exactly a loss. KD exists on a plane separate and distinct from judgment.
Who is the actual biggest winner of this saga?
Without question, it’s Kyrie Irving. Durant’s trade demand completely transferred the focus away from Irving’s doomed gambit seeking a team to hand him a large new contract only to take his player option to remain with the Nets. Durant’s trade demand distracted us from the still-and-forever-amazing “Normal People” quote Irving offered up on occasion of taking the contract option. Durant’s trade demand also seems to have been about or at least related to the Nets’ treatment of Irving in the wake of Irving’s treatment of the Nets. Kyrie’s friend had his back! We think. Durant has never explained the genesis of his dismay and appears unlikely to explain it in the near future.
And now Irving gets to play with an excellent superstar player for what should be a competitive team in a season that will dictate the size and shape of his next multi-year contract. The only way this could have turned out better is if Durant would actually have gotten Marks fired. And that’s assuming that Marks, not the Tsais, were behind the (correct) refusal to give Irving a lucrative multi-year deal.
What now?
Basketball, maybe?
Scores
Sky 90, Liberty 72 (CHI wins series 2-1) — This one was closer than it looks, with Sabrina Ionescu getting a 5-point possession to open the fourth quarter …
… followed by a Betnijah Laney jumper to pull within three. But the Sky weren’t getting goosed in this one, not like in Game 1.
14-13-8 for Candace Parker. 14-5-10 for Courtney Vandersloot. Kahleah Copper and Allie Quigley with 15 apiece. The Liberty did about as well as they could. They just need to start having more successful regular seasons. I think there’s a good chance they can land a big fish in free agency. If they can do that while keeping Ionescu, Laney and Natasha Howard AND stay healthy (Laney’s injury was THE curse of this season), this is a contender.
Sky will play the winner of tonight’s game in Round 2. Nice response since losing Game 1.
Schedule
Last playoff game until Sunday.
Sun at Wings, 9 PM ET, ESPN (Series tied 1-1)
Be excellent to each other.
“Basketball Maybe?” Is that Kyrie’s media network brand?
I think You, the content creators are the biggest winners. Absolutely no change made, but you all were able to came out with a new post every other day about what's NOT happening actually, ten thousands of characters wasted for nothing.