ESPN Warriors beat writer Kendra Andrews revealed a number of details regarding Golden State’s interest in Kevin Durant this summer, when she joined Zach Lowe on the ‘Lowe Post’ podcast earlier this week.
Notably:
- The Warriors, like nearly every team in the NBA, made at least one call to the Brooklyn Nets to discuss what a potential Durant trade might look like.
- The Warriors stars — Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green — were all open to a Durant reunion if the organization could make it work.
- Talks eventually fizzled out when the Nets asked for more than the Warriors were willing to give up in return for KD.
On that last point, Andrews was specific, reporting that the Nets basically asked for every relatively young, good Warriors player, as well as picks.
“Where it got not really serious with the Warriors, they weren’t really willing to give up all the pieces that would be required to give up to get Kevin Durant,” Andrews told Lowe. “That’s every single one of their young pieces: James Wiseman, Jordan Poole, Jonathan Kuminga, Moses Moody, Andrew Wiggins is going to have to go, future draft picks are going to have to go. That is everything.
“Those guys are players — especially when they lost Gary Payton II and Otto Porter Jr. — those are players that became even more important. Not just in their future but even in their present. You’re going to give up everything. That’s where they sort of, ‘eh, we don’t really know if we’re willing to give this up.’”
This doesn’t even take into account that a third team would have to be included in such a deal, since the Nets would have to offload Ben Simmons before they could take on Wiggins’ contract, due to a CBA stipulation about trading players who received rookie max extensions.
Ultimately, the Warriors decided not to complicate things and run it back in 2022-23 with basically the same team that just won a title.
