LAS VEGAS — Having the entire NBA assembled in proximity hasn’t appeared to kick-start the Nets’ trade talks for Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving.
The chatter around a Durant return to Golden State is dying down, with a Warriors reunion seeming more wistful than reality.
While first ESPN and then The Athletic posited mutual interest in Golden State trading for Durant, now both ESPN and The Ringer have walked that back somewhat, tamping down any expectations.
And Steph Curry, who won Finals MVP three weeks ago in leading the Warriors to their fourth championship in eight seasons, addressed the Durant speculation without addressing the Nets star by name.
“The rumor mill and all that stuff is part of the nature of the NBA and league. You take it for what it is,” Curry told NBC Sports Bay Area. “You know how quickly things can change, but I like where we’re at.”
Curry was speaking at the American Century Championship golf tournament in South Lake Tahoe, and appeared perfectly comfortable with his champs standing pat and not gutting their depth or mortgaging their future for Durant.
Any deal for Durant would likely include not only a host of first-round draft picks and swaps, but – for salary matching purposes – Jonathan Kuminga, Jordan Poole, James Wiseman and Andrew Wiggins.
Poole averaged over 25 points over the final few weeks of last season to carry Golden State when Curry was out, while Moses Moody poured in 34 points in Friday night’s Summer League tilt vs. the Knicks.
“There’s a lot of confidence in that,” Curry said of Golden State’s young talent. “There’s a lot of optimism, a lot of energy, about where we’re going.”
It’s well-chronicled that the Nets can’t trade for Wiggins – on a rookie extension – as long as Ben Simmons is on their roster, because the latter is on the same type of deal. It would necessitate either moving Simmons, or constructing a three-team trade and sending Wiggins there for whatever assets they can get.
These are the kind of talks that Brooklyn general manager Sean Marks and owner Joe Tsai will have with a host of other teams in Las Vegas, including Warriors GM Bob Myers and owner Joe Lacob.
But right now, any deal for Durant – be it Golden State or anywhere else – are just at the talking stage, and likely the not-too-serious kind.
“You know what this answer is going to be,” Lacob told the Athletic, “which is, we will always look at any opportunities to make ourselves better. The question you have to ask is: better near term, better intermediate term or better long term?
“Some options to building the team, if we were to pivot in some way, some partial way, might give us an even higher upside near term, but might decrease the long term. So these are the things that [general manager] Bob [Myers] and the group all have to look at and determine what’s the right path.”
“There are always — if it isn’t the player you’re referring to — there’s going to be an ‘X’ player. It’s the one thing about the NBA … It’s just unbelievable how these things seem to happen every year. And we’re always going to be looking to make our team better to try to win a championship. And if we thought it was something better to do for the team, we would do it. You know, we have to weigh short term, long term and all that. We have to weigh the financial obligations in both scenarios. But we will do all that and make the decision we feel is best.”
The Nets are still expected to look to move Durant before Irving, partly because the Lakers appear to be the only market for the point guard and also due to the possibility of having to take back Russell Westbrook’s huge contract. The Lakers have so far been unwilling to part with even a single first-round pick, according to Substack.
LeBron James becomes eligible for his extension Aug. 4, and that deadline could start to put pressure on L.A.