The Brooklyn Nets paid a price when Kevin Durant pushed his way out in the 2022-23 season, but the return they got from Phoenix is starting to look like a steal.
Durant first asked out in June of 2022 and made the Suns his preferred landing spot, according to Grant Hughes of Bleacher Report. When no deal happened, he came back with a second request at the 2023 deadline. Brooklyn and Durant tried to make it work early in the 2022-23 campaign, but the split eventually became unavoidable.
“Kevin Durant made his first trade request in June of 2022, naming the Suns as his preferred destination. No deal came to pass, so KD made a second request at the 2023 deadline,” Grant Hughes wrote of Durant and the Nets for Bleacher Report.
“Somehow, with the whole world knowing he was unhappy and dead set on landing in Phoenix, the Nets still extracted an absolute haul,” Hughes continued. “Usually, when a player narrows his choices to one team, the lack of a bidding war keeps the return lower. Not so here, and the Suns will be feeling the pain of shipping out five first-round assets for the rest of the decade.”
Brooklyn sent Durant and TJ Warren to Phoenix before the 2022-23 trade deadline and got back Mikal Bridges, Cam Johnson, Jae Crowder, first-round picks from the Suns in 2023, 2025, 2027 and 2029, plus a first-round swap in 2028. Durant is now trying to win a title with the Houston Rockets, while Warren is out of the league as of this writing.
Crowder is out of the NBA too, but the Nets kept turning those assets into more value. They moved Bridges to the New York Knicks for five first-round picks, then sent Johnson to the Denver Nuggets in a deal that brought back one first-round pick and Michael Porter Jr.
Brooklyn is still rebuilding, but the way this deal has unfolded makes it look like the Nets came out on the right side of one of the most lopsided trades in recent NBA history.
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