A star of Kevin Durant’s caliber is very rarely up for grabs in the NBA. So when the Nets swingman put in his trade request to team owner Joe Tsai, it took the basketball world by storm.
At first, everyone was preparing for the Nets to receive a flurry of extremely lucrative trade offers — until the Timberwolves traded Rudy Gobert.
Since the Jazz got four first-round picks for a subjectively worse player, the pressure was on for Brooklyn to find an even better package. Sadly, no teams were willing to meet them there.
Now that Durant has accepted a return to Brooklyn, executives around the association are pointing to that Gobert trade as a major reason why KD’s quest for a change of scenery ultimately failed.
“I always thought returning was the best thing for Durant to win,” an Eastern Conference general manager told HoopsHype. “The Nets weren’t going to get anything close to what they wanted, so the best thing for them to do was salvage the relationship. After the Rudy Gobert trade, they would’ve had to get more for Durant.”
Numerous NBA executives who spoke with HoopsHype believe the Gobert trade made it harder for Durant to be moved. The draft pick compensation Utah received from Minnesota was considered such a lopsided haul for Utah around the league that if the Nets got anything less than that for Durant, Brooklyn’s front office would’ve looked foolish, according to numerous rival executives.
Despite a heavy push from Durant to ship him out of town, the Nets are smart enough to understand the situation.
With four years left on his deal, KD had virtually no leverage from the start, and the Nets would have been crazy to trade him for anything less than a premium haul.
Since KD is worth way more than Gobert, why give him up for anything less?
