Kevin Durant: Absence of accountability, team tradition responsible for trade request

Nets star Kevin Durant reported he asked for a trade from Brooklyn this offseason because of the uncertainty close to the group – both equally its gamers and the direction of its society.

Durant requested a trade twice this offseason, such as a sit-down with Nets proprietor Joe Tsai in which he issues an ultimatum to both be traded or for each head mentor Steve Nash and general manager Sean Marks to be fired. The Nets never located a deal for Durant that gave shut to equivalent price for a two-time NBA Finals MVP and made a decision not to trade him.

“My entire detail was, I want most people to be held accountable for their patterns as a basketball player everyday,” Durant mentioned at the HSS Teaching Facility on Monday, “and I assume a whole lot of things was getting swept under the rug since we’re wounded or these fellas (the stars) are not all over.”

Talking to reporters for the first time considering that shortly after the Celtics swept the Nets out of the initially round of the Japanese Conference playoffs, Durant explained he became concerned with the potential of the team just after previous season disintegrated. He explained he felt everybody best-to-bottom was not currently being held accountable for what turned another misplaced year that started with championship anticipations.

“I mean, I’m getting older and I want to be in a location that is steady and hoping to establish a championship lifestyle,” he said. “So I had some doubts about that. I voiced them to Joe (Tsai), and we moved forward from there. But in my head, I did like what we did, what Sean (Marks) set collectively this summertime with the crew. I realized that with all the adversity that we hit, and a great deal of failures that we hit as a workforce last 12 months, fellas are gonna be functioning to get far better and be better and consider to not make that a pattern. So, you know, in the back again of my mind it was continue to there. And I experienced conversations with Steve, Joe, Clara and Sean. And we came to a mutual arrangement that we should preserve going ahead.”

Durant stated when he signed his four-calendar year contract extension worthy of $198M two summers ago, he did so with the notion that he’d nonetheless be playing along with his good friends Kyrie Irving and James Harden for the foreseeable potential.

But the wheels fell off soon after the Nets dropped to the Milwaukee Bucks in the 2nd round of the 2021 NBA Playoffs, with Irving’s unvaccinated standing and ineligibility for house online games complicating issues for Harden – who in the long run forced a midseason trade to the Philadelphia 76ers. When Durant missed a month-and-a-50 percent of action with an MCL harm very last period, the Nets tailspun from No. 1 in the Japanese Conference to as lower as the 10th seed.

All through that stretch, the Nets missing 11 games in a row – which includes many in which Irving and Harden performed – and had been proficiently eradicated from championship competition by advantage of their very poor seeding.

“I considered we could’ve fought as a result of that (losing streak) a minimal bit more and centered on the fellas that ended up here a very little little bit additional. When I went out with the injury, we lost (11) in a row, and I’m like ‘we should not be losing some of these game titles that we lost, regardless of who’s on the flooring,’ Durant claimed. “So I was extra so fearful about how we’re approaching each and every working day as a basketball workforce. And I felt like we could have fought as a result of a great deal of stuff that I felt held us back.

“I didn’t like the fact that it is like, ‘when KD comes back,’” he continued. “I get it. I know I can affect the recreation so a great deal but like, what about these other men that get an possibility to perhaps showcase what they can do but also enable the team in a different way so when I come again I can bounce on their practice as an alternative of them adapting to me? I just felt like that’s what wonderful teams do. I have been a section of some fantastic groups regardless of me getting in that lineup or out. It is not just me. Any guy being out of the lineup, the teach retains likely, so I felt like we could have finished that far better and Steve (Nash) agreed with me.”

Durant also said Irving’s agreement standoff with Nets management did not engage in a role in his ask for to request for a trade. Irving’s camp and Nets brass could not arrive to an settlement on a extensive-expression contract extension and the star guard in the long run opted into the remaining year of his contract. Durant requested a trade days after Irving opted in.

“I felt like their romantic relationship, they experienced to determine that out on their very own,” he claimed. “I’m not the liaison among Kyrie and the corporation. I constantly told them that, I usually instructed Sean and Kyrie ‘y’all gotta develop your connection how y’all do it’ for the reason that everybody’s different, everybody’s distinctive, you approach every player in another way. So I didn’t want to get in concerning that. Regardless of what they negotiated, I had no talks in, and I let them cope with that.”

Durant mentioned he wasn’t astonished the Nets ended up not able to trade him after his request. The Nets balked at a range of underwhelming features from Phoenix, Boston and New Orleans, and Durant said he appreciated the fact that Marks and Tsai did not trade him for pennies on the dollar.

“I know that you are not likely to just give me away,” Durant claimed. “‘You’re as well excellent for us to give you absent.’ Just that straightforward, that straightforward. I get that. I know who I am.”

Durant was complimentary of the moves Marks built with the roster this offseason. The Nets obtained vaunted 3-and-D wing Royce O’Neale from the Utah Jazz in trade for a first-spherical decide on. He also signed enforcer Markieff Morris, forward scorer TJ Warren and combo guard Edmond Sumner. Not to point out the two Ben Simmons and Joe Harris will return from their respective accidents to kickoff this season.

What is on paper, nevertheless, does not generally provide an accurate projection for a team’s ceiling. At the root of Durant’s trade request, he needs all people to be accountable to actively playing at a championship amount – each and every day. Although the Nets struggled in online games Durant missed, Ja Morant’s Memphis Grizzlies completed the time with a 22-5 document in online games the All-Star guard missed.

“I’ve been on championship teams, I’ve been on teams that’ve been correct at the brink of successful a championship, and they (played perfectly both equally with and with out their stars),” he said. “So I desired to be a aspect of a group that did that. Successful and losing, I could take all that. I’ve been in the league for a long time. So it is not more so about just a consequence. It’s how we get to that position. And I wasn’t feeling how we were getting to that point. I did not want it to affect the game so I waited right until the offseason to inform folks how I felt.”

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