About a week into the NBA free agency period, the Brooklyn Nets are still looking for answers on what to do with their pair of disgruntled superstars.
On one hand, trading Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving should net a huge return that could set the team up with budding young stars and multiple future draft picks. On the other hand, finding the right package for their players is proving to be significantly harder than expected.
In the latest update by Brian Windhorst, the Nets are a little shaken up at the direction this “bidding war” is going.
“When the Nets put him on the market, I think [the Nets] thought there was going to be a tremendous bidding war and while there’s a lot of interest, from what I can tell, that bidding war isn’t really hot right now. The teams have made their offers and they don’t really see the need to increase them,” Windhorst said. “Now maybe they’ll be a little bit of action at Summer League where NBA executives are gathering the next few days. There could be a restart of action there.”
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Trading a player of Durant’s caliber is always going to be complicated, but the Rudy Gobert trade only made things worse. If Gobert was able to bring in such a massive haul, the Nets must be feeling even more emboldened to pull off a historic deal for Durant.
“There are a couple of things that happened that made even more complicated. It involved the Utah Jazz. The Jazz make this trade with Rudy Gobert last week and get an incredible haul of draft picks. The Nets’ respond by saying, ‘now, the price for Durant just went higher’ and the rest of the league is saying, ‘We don’t think so. We didn’t like that price, we didn’t like that trade.”
Naturally, there is some resistance from teams around the association. Despite KD’s talents, he’s almost 34 years old now with a track record that doesn’t reflect very highly on his leadership ability.
If the Nets want to make out as winners in all of this, they need to stay patient and hold firm. Eventually, they will make a trade that involves Durant. The only question now is how much leverage the Nets can build up between now and the inevitable moment when Durant finally gets traded.
