Kemba Walker recently joined the New York Knicks after spending the last two seasons with the Boston Celtics. The talented playmaker was traded to the Oklahoma City Thunder, who left him free and ready to join another team in the league.
Walker is coming home next season, joining the exciting Knickerbockers. He’ll create some sort of Big 3 with Julius Randle and Evan Fournier (another offseason acquisition) trying to lead this team to the promised land. During his introductory press conference, Kemba revealed he was close to joining the Knicks in 2019.
Things didn’t work for the parties involved, but he could have teamed up with Kevin Durant in the big apple. According to Marc Bergman of The New York Post, the former Charlotte Hornets playmaker almost joined forces with Kevin Durant at the Madison Square Garden.
According to an NBA source, Walker wanted to team with Kevin Durant when the Knicks had cap space for two max players.
The Walker-Durant Knicks pairing didn’t happen because KD ultimately decided to join Kyrie Irving in Brooklyn. It was a move that eventually led to the formation of a Brooklyn Big 3 with James Harden joining the band last winter.
A Garden tandem of Walker and Durant might have changed the Knicks’ landscape, but also would’ve prevented them from signing power forward Julius Randle, who emerged as a first-time All-Star last season and a second-team All-NBA selection.
The Knicks were trying to get Kyrie to the Garden, but seeing the 2016 NBA champion mindset of joining the Nets, they decided to pursue Kemba and pair him with Durant, a two-time NBA champion.
The Post has learned the Knicks, amid their chase for Durant, were told emphatically Irving was not changing his mind about Brooklyn.
As a fallback, former Knicks president Steve Mills and current GM Scott Perry turned their sights on trying to get Walker to agree to play with KD. In fact, Durant’s camp asked Knicks management what other star it could get to pair with Durant.
When Durant and Irving ultimately signed with the Nets, the Knicks and Walker mutually agreed it was not a good idea to bring him to New York without another current All-Star.
KD and Kemba would have been an interesting duo to watch. Seeing how Walker and Irving’s bodies have acted in the past two seasons, perhaps it would’ve been much different if Durant went to the Knicks instead of the Nets.
We’ll never know how these two would’ve fared in the MSG, but now we can see them go at it in the battle of New York. That’s a win-win situation for basketball fans.
