Nearly two months after demanding a trade, longtime NBA superstar Kevin Durant has reached a new agreement to continue playing for the Brooklyn Nets, according to the team.
Nets general manager Sean Marks issued a statement Tuesday:
Steve Nash and I, together with Joe Tsai and Clara Wu Tsai, met with Kevin Durant and Rich Kleiman in Los Angeles yesterday. We have agreed to move forward with our partnership. We are focusing on basketball, with one collective goal in mind: Build a lasting franchise to bring a championship to Brooklyn.
While the Nets understandably didn’t put it in the statement, a critical piece of context is that Brooklyn reportedly hasn’t received nearly the value it expected to get in trade proposals for Durant. With Durant under contract for four more seasons, a short-term resolution allows both sides to avoid the awkwardness of a potentially prolonged standoff entering training camp next month.
So, how will it all impact the Houston Rockets, who control Brooklyn’s first-round draft assets through 2027 as a result of the blockbuster James Harden trade from January 2021?
This is going to be fascinating to watch play out. Any losing streak has the possibility of nuclear fallout. https://t.co/C0C5X8Blik
— Ben DuBose (@BenDuBose) August 23, 2022
Time will tell, but it’s not necessarily bad. For the 2023 NBA draft, Houston only owns the right to swap first-round picks with Brooklyn, as opposed to directly receiving that pick. With the Rockets being extremely young and extremely short on salary cap space (that will change in the 2023 offseason), Houston was always likely to be worse than Brooklyn in 2022-23. Thus, that swap was unlikely to activate, even if the Nets had traded Durant. From a Rockets perspective, the relevant time window when it comes to those Brooklyn draft assets is 2024 through 2027.
At the moment, there’s no additional clarity regarding that window. Sure, there’s an argument to be made that if the Nets play well this season, it could boost the odds of that group sticking together in future years. On the other hand, there’s also a range of poor outcomes that could come into play. Will Durant’s presumed uncertainty, and the potential of a renewed trade demand accompanying any losing streak, put a cloud over the franchise that permeates the locker room? What if co-star Kyrie Irving, who will be a free agent in 2023, leaves for no compensation after the season?
It's a bad outcome if the Nets play great, sure. But there's plenty of risk in the other direction, as well, and Kyrie is a FA next summer.
Basically, it sounds like a one-year trial run
— Ben DuBose (@BenDuBose) August 23, 2022
There’s also the reality that Brooklyn’s draft pick in 2023 — which, again, was always likely to belong to them, no matter what — should be lower in the first-round order, and thus less likely to be a significant contributor in the years relevant to Houston.
Finally, if Durant were to ask out again in 2023, Brooklyn’s potential trade return should be reduced due to Durant having an extra year of age and having one less year on his contract. Furthermore, he would presumably be less likely to be talked into dropping that request, as he’s doing now, if the first go-round proved unsuccessful.
In short: From a Houston perspective, there are certainly new layers of risk, as it pertains to the outlook of Brooklyn’s future draft assets. However, those risk factors cut both ways.
Instead of learning the details of a potential resolution in the coming weeks, it now appears likely to take until the 2023 offseason for the Rockets and general manager Rafael Stone to find answers.
But given that 2024 through 2027 remains the key window for those picks, Brooklyn kicking the can to 2023 instead of 2022 is fairly immaterial to the Rockets. In some ways, it might even help.
