What we know – and what we don’t – about the rumored Jaylen Brown – Kevin Durant trade talks

High-stakes silly season discourse has arrived.

When are trade talks not actually trade talks, but gauging a player’s value, or putting out feelers for a potential future bid on a star? Front office employees of all 30 teams in the NBA regularly engage each other in hypothetical discussions about what a trade might look like between franchises that have little to do with actual interest in pulling the trigger barring an especially felicitous match for both sides.

But there is always the chance that one party involved in such a scenario will take those conversations and misrepresent them for their own interests, which can cause turbulence in the organization on the other side of the conversation. The picture of such a process perhaps playing out between the Boston Celtics and Brooklyn Nets is still fuzzy.

But, there seems to be a growing consensus that the Celtics contacted the Nets in doing due diligence about the availability of Kevin Durant via trade, and in the process found themselves sucked into a leverage play for a tepid market for Durant’s services as a result.