NBA Rumors: Kevin Durant demanded a trade (again) after Kyrie Irving’s deal to the Dallas Mavericks was completed.
It was somewhat of an abrupt ending for the Brooklyn Nets who decided to trade both Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving at the NBA Trade Deadline. And even nearly a week after the chaos of the deadline, we still don’t have the entire timeline of how it all went down for the Nets.
Though, we’ve been getting bits and pieces of how the team’s two blockbuster trades did happen. For the most part, we know Kyrie probably wanted out because he wasn’t offered the contract extension that he believed he deserved. Was there possibly more that took place behind the scenes, probably, but the Kyrie situation seemed like a long time coming.
However, what’s more interesting is the fact that it has now been reported (by Marc Stein) that Durant quietly demanded a trade away from the Nets shortly after the Kyrie to Dallas Mavericks deal was done.
As we know now, the Nets traded Durant to his preferred destination (Phoenix Suns) just before the NBA Trade Deadline and reportedly didn’t negotiate with any other teams. In fact, the team did quite a good job in keeping this most recent trade demand secret in real-time.
Kevin Durant demanding a trade should not come as a surprise
Looking back, it shouldn’t really be surprising if this is in fact true that KD did demand a trade away from the Nets. Despite all the chaos that took place with the Nets, with KD and Kyrie on the roster, it always seemed as if these two players were somewhat tied together.
So that’s why when it seemed like a foregone conclusion that Kyrie was leaving after not getting an extension last offseason the very next thing that emerged from the team was KD’s first trade demand. That should’ve told us all we needed to know about these two players.
Nevertheless, what’s done is done. And the KD-Kyrie era in Brooklyn is officially over. I have a feeling we’re only going to get more and more of these stories and that we haven’t heard the last of these small tidbits.
But the Nets are heading into a new era and you have to hope that this time around it plays out a bit better than it did over the last few years with KD and Kyrie.