Mocked for making a series of offseason demands that were swatted away by the people who pay him, Kevin Durant can still have the last laugh. He can still make this all work out in the end for his Brooklyn Nets.
Durant is the best player who ever suited up for a New York-area team, better than the likes of Patrick Ewing, Walt Frazier, Willis Reed, Julius Erving, and Jason Kidd. He made as big a shot as any New York star ever made when he drained that Game 7 fadeaway against Milwaukee, a tying 2-pointer that would’ve been a winning 3-pointer if not, Durant said, for “my big-ass foot.”
None of that changed because Durant first insisted that the Nets trade him to a more stable and committed franchise, and then insisted that owner Joe Tsai fire general manager Sean Marks and coach Steve Nash in exchange for KD’s renewed loyalty.
So as long as the 34-year-old Durant stays healthy, and the ball is in his hands, he gets to write his own story. And it does appear there is room at the top of the NBA power structure for Durant to exercise some literary license.
The Boston Celtics, who humiliated last year’s Nets in the first round on the way to the Finals, have now gone from dead-serious title contenders to complete unknown in the wake of the Ime Udoka mess. On the other side of the draw, the defending-champion Golden State Warriors might ultimately be impacted more by Draymond Green’s hard punch to Jordan Poole’s face than they were by Green’s bygone feud with Durant.
Nobody truly expects the dysfunctional Nets to take advantage of someone else’s dysfunction. So imagine what Durant would do for his current standing in the league, and for his legacy as an all-time great, if he can book a parade for Brooklyn.
Kevin Durant can turn a turbulent offseason into a legacy-changing campaign.Corey SipkinIf he could win it all with the perpetually unreliable Kyrie Irving as his quarterback. If he could win it all with the overmatched Nash as his head coach.
If he could make a champion out of Ben Simmons, after Simmons made the Sixers throw up their hands and cry uncle.
Yes, after what we have seen (or, better yet, not seen) from the Nets since Durant and Irving arrived to great fanfare in the summer of 2019, it’s awfully difficult to picture them celebrating under a confetti rain in Barclays Center next June. They have won a grand total of one playoff series together. Injuries, self-serving sabbaticals, big trades gone awry, poor coaching and culture building, and general underperformance have conspired to make Brooklyn the worst postseason team money could buy.
The same Nets fans who assumed that their team would’ve won a title by now would probably sign up for a tough six-game loss in the conference finals. If nothing else, that would suggest progress and at least a semblance of a program.
But what if Durant reestablishes himself as the world’s best player and takes this team the distance? It would change all the noise around him. It would convert the amusement (at his expense) into admiration (of his resilience).
This sure isn’t meant to make KD a victim of events he couldn’t control. He created his own adversity here. For starters, he never should have left Golden State as a free agent. Durant has already cost himself one ring and probably more by trying to answer the critics he should have ignored — the voices assailing him for joining the same superteam that had vanquished his Oklahoma City Thunder.
Durant had elevated the Warriors to a higher place by winning back-to-back championships, but felt he needed to prove he could form a juggernaut to call his own. He made one of the worst trades in NBA history — Steph Curry for Irving — in pursuit of something even his wingspan couldn’t reach. And after the Warriors won a title without him last year, Durant couldn’t take it anymore. He decided he needed to find another team, another cast, that cared as much as the Warriors did.
“My whole thing was, I want everybody to be held accountable for their habits as a player every day, and a lot of stuff was getting swept under the rug because we’re injured or guys aren’t around,” Durant said at the start of training camp. “We could’ve fought through that more and focused on the guys that were here. When I went out with the injury, we lost [11] in a row. We shouldn’t be losing some of these games.
The Kevin Durant and Steve Nash relationship will be a focal point of the season.Corey Sipkin“I was more so worried about how we were approaching every day as a team. I felt like we could’ve fought through a lot of stuff that held us back.”
Durant acted on those feelings by demanding a trade, and then by demanding the heads belonging to Marks and Nash. When Tsai rejected all of the above, compelling Durant to stand down and honor his lavish contract, well, it didn’t make the 6-foot-10 superstar look very good. Whatever happened to the era of player empowerment?
But when the Nets open the season at home Wednesday night against the Pelicans, KD can regain control of his own story. He can finally lead his team to where it was supposedly meant to go.
More than anything, with the ball in his hands, Kevin Durant can earn himself the last laugh.
