As Kyrie Irving departs Nets, will Kevin Durant want to be next?
Kevin Durant #7 of the Nets looks on in the first half against the Los Angeles Lakers at Barclays Center on Monday, Jan. 30, 2023. Credit: Jim McIsaac
It had been only five minutes since the Nets officially announced that the Kyrie Irving trade with Dallas had gone through, yet Irving’s name and number were no longer lit up above his locker at Barclays Center as they had been for the past 3 1⁄2 years.
The locker room was respectfully quiet on Monday, a stark contrast to the chaotic whirlwind that had swirled around this team since Irving announced Friday that he wanted to be traded. Nic Claxton, sitting pensively at his locker, admitted that it had been a rough couple of days.
“It’s tough,” Claxton said. “I mean everyone was caught off guard.”
Of course, the only opinion that really matters right now is how tough is Irving’s departure on Kevin Durant, who is the last man standing in this Big Three experiment that also once included James Harden.
Durant joined his team on the bench in the second quarter of Monday night’s matchup against the Clippers but left the building after the game without stopping to talk to a group of reporters or even making eye contact. He is said to be close to coming back from a knee injury that has caused him to miss 13 games. In fact, this week was targeted by Durant in a recent podcast as a possible time for his return and until recently, there had a been a lot of thought that the Nets would be back to playing like contenders.
Now it’s a fair question to ask whether Durant has also played his last game in a Nets uniform as there are still three days until Thursday’s trade deadline.
Durant, after all, asked to be traded this summer. That fact alone caused the sharks to be circling the moment that Irving asked to be traded.
Almost immediately, the Durant for Jaylen Brown rumors were resurfacing, though it’s hard to imagine that the Nets and Celtics would want to do business with each other. The Phoenix Suns are said to be in the hunt for Durant, who is under contract for three more years.
Durant is a consummate professional. Unlike Irving and Harden, he has never invented a phantom injury or not worked his hardest. After the Nets failed to honor his trade request this summer, he shrugged and hit the ground running.
The Nets would love to keep him, given that it is easier to build around a generational talent than not. The question is why would Durant, 34, want to stay around.
Durant was having an MVP-caliber year when he went down with a knee injury and the Nets were looking as if they could go deep into the playoffs, having won 18 of their last 20.
Considering the emergency circumstances, the Nets got a pretty good return for Irving by picking up former Net Spencer Dinwiddie and defensive talent Dorian Finney-Smith along with some draft picks. Yet, even with a player of Durant’s talent, this is not a team you can legitimately imagine competing with Boston and Milwaukee in the Eastern Conference.
It’s possible that the Nets might not be done, that they are still holding out hope they can rebuild this team on the fly and add something over the next couple of days that makes Durant think that he is with a team that can compete with the top ones.
After the Nets' 124-116 loss to the Clippers, Nets coach Jacque Vaughn was asked how he thought Irving's departure would impact Durant.
Said Vaughn: "I'm going to coach the group that's in front of me and that won't change. I won't speculate and try to get into Kevin's mind."
When asked the same question before the game, Vaughn said, “At the end of the day, Kevin wants to win. That’s always been our goal. He wants to win at shootaround, he wants to win any game of the week. That’s why he loves to play and that’s why he wants to play 82 games.”
The question that remains is where those games will be.
Barbara Barker is an award-winning columnist and features writer in the sports department at Newsday. She has covered sports in New York for more than 20 years.
