The Houston Rockets are buying and selling for Kevin Durant, CBS Information has confirmed. The deal will ship Jalen Inexperienced, Dillon Brooks, the No. 10 choose on this week’s draft and 5 second-round picks to the Phoenix Suns in a blockbuster deal. Durant, coming into his 18th NBA season, will now be a part of his fifth NBA staff after stints with the Oklahoma Metropolis Thunder, Golden State Warriors, Brooklyn Nets and the Suns.
The Suns acquired Durant on the 2023 commerce deadline with a lot fanfare. Mat Ishbia had simply taken over the staff and he needed to make a splash, so he traded management of 5 first-round picks together with Mikal Bridges, Cam Johnson and Jae Crowder to get the 2014 MVP. Nonetheless, the transfer was not sufficient to offer Ishbia the contender he craved. The Suns misplaced within the second spherical to the Denver Nuggets in 2023. They had been swept by the Minnesota Timberwolves within the first spherical in 2024. Then, this season, they missed the postseason all collectively.
Rumors of Durant’s availability on the deadline got here seemingly out of nowhere on the deadline. His Suns had spent months attempting and failing to commerce Bradley Beal for Jimmy Butler. Due to this fact, with the deadline nearing, they took a special strategy. They tried to commerce Durant again to the Warriors in a three-team deal that might have introduced in property from Golden State and Butler from the Warriors.
The one downside? Durant did not wish to return to the staff with whom he gained his two championships. That scuttled the deal. Different groups sniffed round on the deadline, however Durant seemingly most well-liked to complete the season in Phoenix and work out his future later.
“Me going into your staff in the midst of the season it should be a giant blow to any staff I’ll,” Durant stated on the time. “I get why you wish to commerce me, easy incontrovertible fact that’s simply enterprise. However for me taking a look at it, it simply would not make sense for both aspect to undergo that after we might simply play the season out and if that is the choice you wish to make within the offseason you then determine it out.”
So Durant completed the marketing campaign in Phoenix after which obtained traded hours earlier than the ultimate recreation of the season. Durant’s first staff, the Oklahoma Metropolis Thunder, are taking part in for his or her first title in OKC and internet hosting the Indiana Pacers in Sport 7 of the Finals on Sunday night time. Durant himself was on-stage on the Fanatics Fest in New York when the information broke Sunday afternoon.
The season was successful individually for Durant, however at 36 years outdated, indicators of slippage began to seep in for the primary time. Durant was nonetheless an All-Star choice final season, and his taking pictures numbers regarded principally the identical. However he will get to the basket lower than he did at his peak. His free-throw fee in Phoenix was solely 31%, down from a profession determine of 39.4%. A lot of the all-in-one metrics at this stage peg him as a really, excellent participant, however not fairly the MVP he was at his peak.
Additional complicating a attainable commerce was the fact that Durant, on an expiring contract, held some measure of management over the proceedings. No staff would surrender a considerable asset bundle for him if he did not wish to play for them. Durant laid the inspiration for this quickly after the deadline. “I need my profession to finish on my phrases. That is the one factor,” he stated. That prevented an all-out bidding conflict and with it any hopes the Suns had of recouping a bundle just like the one they paid for Durant on the 2023 commerce deadline.
Luckily, there was nonetheless a good quantity of pursuits that seemingly appealed to Durant. On the commerce deadline, it was reported that 5 groups held mutual curiosity with Durant in a attainable deal: Houston, San Antonio, Minnesota, Miami and New York. When the offseason arrived, these 5 groups had been unsurprisingly on the entrance of the road, and positive sufficient, Durant wound up touchdown with one of many groups on that checklist. The Raptors, for what it is price, had been additionally reportedly within the combine.
However the Rockets are the staff that in all probability made essentially the most basketball sense from the beginning. Final yr, Houston had a suffocating protection and obtained by on offense due to its athleticism in transition and its unimaginable offensive rebounding. However producing good pictures within the half courtroom proved a significant problem, and that was in the end what doomed the Rockets within the playoffs.
The Suns are reportedly planning to maintain Inexperienced, although he performs the identical place as Suns star Devin Booker and Beal. Inexperienced scored 21 factors per recreation on 42.3/35.4/81.3 taking pictures splits for Houston in 2024-25, his fourth season within the NBA.
Few gamers in NBA historical past have been higher at producing clear appears to be like for themselves than Durant. He’s precisely the type of half-court bucket-generator that the Rockets lacked final season, and in Houston, he reunites with Ime Udoka, who coached him in Brooklyn on Steve Nash’s employees, and Royal Ivey, an assistant on Udoka’s employees who’s each a former teammate and assistant coach of Durant’s. All events concerned right here knew what a clear match this is able to be, and now, after incomes a No. 2 seed within the 2024-25 season, the Rockets have discovered their offensive centerpiece.
