Kevin Durant is currently not everyone’s favorite player. His situation with the Brooklyn Nets seems to go from bad to worse. His decision to ask Nets owner Joe Tsai to let go of GM Sean Marks and Coach Steve Nash if he wants KD to stay has not gone over well with a lot of people. It’s safe to describe the environment within the franchise as toxic.
Which draws an interesting parallel to something Durant himself had said in 2018 regarding none other than LeBron James. When LeBron James moved to the Los Angeles Lakers in 2018, there were a lot of questions about how the team would build a roster around him. There were question marks over whether the Lakers would be able to attract stars to play with James.
Durant had told Bleacher Report at the time that the media attention around James is what makes the environment ‘toxic’.
“So much hype comes from being around LeBron from other people,” Durant said. “He has so many fanboys in the media. Even the beat writers just fawn over him. I’m like, we’re playing basketball here, and it’s not even about basketball at certain points. So I get why anyone wouldn’t want to be in that environment because it’s toxic.
“Especially when the attention is bullshit attention, fluff. It’s not LeBron’s fault at all; it’s just the fact you have so many groupies in the media that love to hang on every word. Just get out of the way and let us play basketball.”
The irony of the situation is that media attention throughout Durant’s entire tenure has been on Brooklyn. Their inability to win more than one playoff series in this era is a factor. But James Harden asked out, and the Nets had to deal with Kyrie Irving’s drama, largely leveraged by his friendship with Durant.
Now, the former MVP is asking to leave a franchise that has given him everything he asked for. In doing so, he has asked the coach he was excited about, Steve Nash, to be fired. And his trade request is also now seemingly independent of Irving himself deciding to opt-in with the Nets.
In the meanwhile, while the Lakers may not be doing well at the moment, they have won a championship with LeBron James already. If KD leaves the Nets now, which is likely, he will do so after not having anywhere close to that level of success. What’s more, it’s unlikely that many teams will be easily able to build around him either, considering how much they will have to trade for him.
