When it comes to Kevin Durant, there really never is a dull moment.
After already requesting a trade just a year after signing a long-term deal with the Nets, Durant dropped another bombshell on Monday. According to The Athletic, KD has informed Brooklyn ownership that if they want him to stick around, they’ll need to get rid of head coach Steve Nash and/or general manager Sean Marks. The request is made even more bizarre by the fact that Durant and Kyrie Irving reportedly handpicked Nash to coach the Nets two seasons ago, after running then head coach Kenny Atkinson out of town.
Once again, KD has changed his mind, and put the ball on Brooklyn’s court. Marcus Thompson of The Athletic joined Papa and Lund on Monday, and explained how Durant’s conduct is in a round-about way a compliment to the Warriors organization.
“Number one, Kevin Durant spent three years in a championship organization and he saw exactly how it’s supposed to look like,” Thompson said on KNBR. “It might be in a backdoor way, a very bright compliment to the Warriors. I think he believes a coach and a general manager can operate that way. I think he believes a co-star should operate a certain way. And perhaps that’s why he’s like ‘Look, I know how this thing is supposed to go, so I want that.’
“And we already know there’s been some discussions about the possibility of him coming back [to the Warriors] and he wasn’t like ‘absolutely not.’ So I do think Kevin Durant learned what it takes to be a champion and he has an idea about how it works and he learned that with the Warriors.”
As Thompson touched on, that’s probably why Durant wasn’t totally opposed to heading back to Golden State this summer. The Warriors are a championship organization and it’s clear at this point the Brooklyn Nets are not. Part of the reason for Golden State’s success has been Bob Myers, which might also provide some insight in why KD wants to break up the Nets’ current GM-head coach pairing.
“I do think we know how his relationship was with Bob Myers,” Thompson continued. “They were really tight. He did clash with Steve Kerr, but I wonder if he needs that type of figure. Somebody who can be there with him and for him and because Nash is trying to coach 15 guys, he can’t be that. Maybe Sean Marks doesn’t want to be. So if I was guessing at it, I think he wants somebody like [Myers] that he respects, he can listen to, somebody with a resume that is worthy of Kevin Durant.
“So I’m curious if this is him saying ‘I don’t want Steve Nash as my coach, I don’t like Steve Nash anymore,’ or the inter-dynamics between those two is what he’s not going along with. And if you swap one of them out, would that kind of suffice.”
Listen to the full interview below. You can listen to every KNBR interview on our podcast page at knbr.com/podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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