Kevin Durant reportedly gave team governor Joe Tsai an ultimatum last week, demanding that the Nets either find a trade or fire coach Steve Nash and general manager Sean Marks. Tsai responded by publicly backing his staff, and no trade has occurred.
Yet, according to one NBA exec, Durant may not want to stay in Brooklyn regardless of what Tsai does to cater to him.
In his newsletter on Substack, Marc Stein reported that a well-connected NBA executive believes that Durant would more likely retire than return to the Brooklyn Nets for the upcoming season.
Via The Stein Line:
“During summer league in Las Vegas, one of the most well-connected team executives I speak to regularly insisted to me that, based on what he was hearing, Kevin Durant was more apt to retire than play again for the Brooklyn Nets. This was in early July.”
Durant’s bold demand to Joe Tsai to fire both Nash and Marks certainly didn’t help his trade value, and Stein reports that in addition to the issue of finding enough assets to make a deal for Durant, teams are understandably wary of putting the fate of the franchise into the hands of a potentially volatile superstar.
“The foremost obstacle to a trade that brings an end to this saga, on top of Durant’s age (34 on Sept. 29) or injury history, remains the fear we reported on recently that interested teams have when they see how much the Nets have given Durant and still failed to prevent him from wanting to move onto his fourth NBA team. Potential suitors don’t want to surrender what Brooklyn is asking for asset-wise because they still want some semblance of a quality roster for Durant to join, but also because they are deeply unsure they can do any better than Brooklyn has when it comes to keeping him happy.”
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