Kevin Durant stunned a lot of people when he requested a trade from the Brooklyn Nets at the beginning of free agency.
Not only is he one of the greatest basketball players of all time, but he also has four years remaining on his contract. The entire thing was very unusual on multiple fronts.
Quickly, two main reasons came out as the rationale for Durant wanting out of Brooklyn.
But they never made much sense.
This past week ESPN NBA insider Dave McMenamin appeared on the Lowe Post podcast and offered something of a wild theory in regards to Durant’s trade demand.
“There is a school of thought speaking to people around the league that they think the Kevin Durant trade request wasn’t actually about him getting out of Brooklyn,” McMenamin said. “It was about getting Kyrie Irving out of Brooklyn.”
Earlier this week, it came out that Durant also wasn’t happy with Steve Nash as his head coach. He had a different preferred candidate in mind. That too would make a lot of sense.
Nash has deeply underwhelmed as a head coach thus far.
It will be interesting to see how this entire situation eventually shakes out.
Brooklyn’s desired way of moving forward is known. That said, they are still open to dealing Durant, as was made clear by the trade proposal that the New Orleans Pelicans rejected from them. But it needs to be a good offer.
There is only one team Durant doesn’t want to go to, so he appears flexible. And as reported by ESPN NBA insider Adrian Wojnarowski, one team is currently “most determined” to land him – for whatever that’s worth.
Vanessa’s response. https://t.co/uzfQOTVQIB
— Game 7 (@game7__) July 21, 2022
This entire situation is obviously a huge mess. The Nets may be willing to part ways with Irving, but they want to keep Durant.
Will they be able to thread the needle and find a compromise that rids them of one of their problem child stars while retaining the other?
Time will tell.
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A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
