From day 1 in Brooklyn, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant were seen as a package deal. You couldn’t have one without the other.
Kevin Durant probably doesn’t sign with the Nets if they also don’t sign Irving. Irving doesn’t actually go to the Nets if he doesn’t follow Durant. In hindsight, that may have actually worked out better for Brooklyn instead of all the chaos that has ensued over the last 3 years. But that’s neither here nor there.
The point is that the presence of these two was clearly contingent on the other being there. And that was never more clear than the day Irving made his departure for Dallas.
In the immediate aftermath of Irving being traded to the Mavericks, Kevin Durant reportedly asked to be quietly moved to the Phoenix Suns, according to NBA insider Marc Stein.
“League sources say that Durant told the Nets shortly after Irving’s abrupt departure that he wanted to be traded immediately to Phoenix if a deal could be struck — but without the public knowing that he had requested a trade for the second time in eight months.
The Nets complied. After three-and-a-half seasons in Brooklyn filled with much more tumult than success, Irving’s sudden trade demand on Feb. 3 was indeed the breaking point for Nets owner Joe Tsai and GM Sean Marks. But they did it KD’s way and still got the deal they wanted.”
It seems the Nets were more than willing to oblige and pull the plug on the 3-year experiment that can be considered nothing but a failure now.
The initial reports of the Nets wanting to hold on to Durant are still believable. The trade Brooklyn made with the Mavericks strikes me as one of a team still looking to compete.
Durant just made it clear, though, that if Irving wasn’t going to be there then he wasn’t going to be either. Considering how the rest of the KD-Kyrie era went, we honestly should’ve known it was coming.