Is Kevin Durant staying or leaving the Nets?
Is Kyrie Irving staying or leaving the Nets?
The answer to that question appears to change just about every single day it seems since Durant’s request for a trade out of Brooklyn became public just hours before NBA Free Agency began. Since then the news of where two of the NBA’s biggest superstars will end up playing has been ever-changing, with things taking another turn on Tuesday night.
A source close to Irving told the New York Post that Irving wanted to be in Brooklyn whether Durant was there or not and that he wasn’t sure where the talk had come from to begin with.
“How did we get into this situation about trade, when he opted in?” the unnamed source told the Post. “Here is the situation. He opted in, which means he had and he has every intention of playing with the Brooklyn Nets. KD decides he wants out and now everybody is talking about trading Kyrie, right? Kyrie has not asked for a trade. Now, if the Nets don’t want him, that’s something totally different.
“Kyrie has not said he wants a trade. He opted in. (So where did) the trade conversations come from? Is it because, KD requested a trade and now everybody’s like let’s trade Ky? Kyrie opted in.”
That was followed by a report from ESPN’s Brian Windhorst that the Nets were in “retrench mode” in terms of any movement on Durant or Irving. So far no team has come close to matching the extensive haul that general manager Sean Marks and the Nets are rightly looking for in any deal involving their cornerstone player.
And Brooklyn appeared that they could be prepared to keep the two.
“Boy, is that the vibe that is coming out of Brooklyn right now, that they are prepared to do that (keep Durant and Irving), ESPN’s Windhorst said on Wednesday’s edition of Get Up. “This could be a negotiating position, or it could be a smart decision if you don’t like the trade offers that you have. The market for Durant has not been as lucrative as the Nets were hoping, and the market for Kyrie is very thin. It’s essentially the Lakers and the trade offer isn’t great. If you don’t like what you have, you just sort of close ranks and look at re-starting it.”
.@WindhorstESPN thinks there is a possibility Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant stay in Brooklyn 👀
"The market for Durant has not been as lucrative as the Nets were hoping." pic.twitter.com/pkLgjTdFHe
— Get Up (@GetUpESPN) July 13, 2022
In case your head hasn’t already been spinning through all of this, there is another wrinkle to all of this. The Utah Jazz are now reportedly open to hearing trade offers for Donovan Mitchell.
How does that impact the Nets you might ask? Well, it is widely known that the Pheonix Suns and Miami Heat are two of Durant’s trade destinations, and Brooklyn has had conversations about a possible deal to send the NBA superstar to Toronto. A deal with Pheonix would be rather tricky and need multiple teams, while Toronto is unwilling to part with Rookie of the Year Scottie Barnes.
The availability of Mitchell could open the door for a multi-team trade involving the Suns, Nets, Jazz and possibly a fourth team to pull off a deal to get Durant to the desert. “The Donovan Mitchell development opens up some more doors,” Windhorst said.
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Right now, the tide says that there may still be some hope left that the 7-11 era in Brooklyn may get to ride one final time, but that seems to change as much as the weather these days. Reports have suggested that Durant and his business partner Rich Kleiman have had more contact with the Nets recently.
For now, the situation remains as is between all three parties.
