Kevin Durant is a Phoenix Sun after the Brooklyn Nets sent the superstar west for a massive haul.
It cost the Suns Mikal Bridges, Cam Johnson, Jae Crowder plus four unprotected first-round picks and a 2028 swap, but the deal immediately turns them into a clear title contender in the Western Conference.
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NBA insider Adrian Wojnarowski broke the news Thursday night (AEDT) by dropping one of his famous ‘Woj bombs’ live on ESPN and detailed just how this seismic trade developed.
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Wojnarowski went on to say that the move is a clear signal of Ishbia’s strategic intention as the new owner.
“For Phoenix this is a chance now to really make a run at a title, especially with Chris Paul certainly at a point of his career where you don’t know how much time you have left of him playing at perhaps championship level basketball,” he said.
“Matt Ishbia and his general manager James Jones they were working through tonight to get this done. This was a deal done very much on the ownership level too, Ishbia and Joe Tsai the Nets owner I’m told there was a back and forth with them that began to start the conversation. Typically you look through NBA history and players of this magnitude who move, those conversations are happening at ownership level, this did too, but (general managers) Sean Marks and James Jones stepped in and got this deal done.”
The behind-the-scenes nature of these conversations and how quickly they seemingly developed, coupled with Wojnarowski’s revelation occurring at 1am on the East Coast of the United States (11pm in Phoenix and 10pm on the West Coast), meant that it took the majority of the NBA world by surprise – including Mikal Bridges who was as shocked as everyone else to learn the news he had been traded.
This made for some crazy reactions in the immediate aftermath from NBA players, pundits, and fans alike, with Twitter being sent into meltdown.
ESPN’s Michael Wilbon said it best when he compared the impact of the Durant trade news to an earthquake during an appearance on ‘Fox Sports News’.
“People might have been asleep in New York and Brooklyn, they weren’t asleep here (in Phoenix) necessarily and it felt like an earthquake, but we have no fault lines in Arizona,” Wilbon said.
“The news of getting Kevin Durant is seismic here. It reminds a lot of people of a certain age of what happened 31 years ago when the Suns traded for a just entering his prime Charles Wade Barkley. I texted Charles at about 2am and said ‘If I’m not asleep because I’m so excited you can’t be asleep either’ and everybody feels that way here.
“I feel the most excited for Chris Paul You have a table setter… the most reliable player in the game over the past 10 years (in Paul). He knows how to organise people, how to calm people… Kevin Durant wants to come some place where it’s quiet and calm and he has security (because) he ain’t have that over the last four years (in Brooklyn).”
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Prior to acquiring Kevin Durant, Phoenix had a 30-26 overall record this season, which was still good enough to have them sitting fifth in the remarkably even Western Conference standings.
However, since getting blown out at home by Luka Doncic and the Dallas Mavericks in Game 7 of last year’s Western Conference semi-finals, they had looked a shadow of the team which had been a top contender in the two seasons prior – including being up 2-0 over the eventual champion Milwaukee Bucks in the 2021 NBA Finals – with most around the league declaring that the Suns championship window was beginning to slam shut and questioning where things had gone so wrong this season.
Now with one extremely bold move by new owner Ishbia, Phoenix have gone from a fallen contender whose championship window appeared to be rapidly closing to the TAB favourite to win the Western Conference ($3.25) this season and tied with the Milwaukee Bucks ($5.50) as second favourites behind the Boston Celtics ($4) to win the 2022/23 NBA Championship.
FS1’s Skip Bayless is extremely high on the Suns after they pulled the trigger on the blockbuster deal to acquire perennial All-Star Kevin Durant.
“I’m talking about bombshell, I’m talking about nuclear… Kevin Durant to Phoenix, are you kidding me?,” he exclaimed during a recent segment on ‘Skip and Shannon: Undisputed’.
“… If you put Kevin Durant with Chris Paul, even though he’s 37 year’s old, he will summons it up on occasion and the occasion will last through the playoffs. If you put him (KD) with a Devin Booker, who to me is just entering his prime right now, all of a sudden you have nuclear plus nuclear. All of a sudden I’m looking at Deandre Ayton… he is averaging a career-high 18.4 points a game, I’d say that works.”
Fellow FS1 sportscaster Colin Cowherd was also a fan of the move.
“I think Phoenix this morning has an argument for best team in the West… love the move,”Cowherd said on ‘The Herd with Colin Cowherd’ in the immediate aftermath of the trade.
“This team is exactly what championship teams are… Veteran head coach everybody likes who is a great communicator. Really smart veteran point guard who doesn’t need to score but can. Two wings, one a guard and one a big, both can score but they are both kind of chill. Kevin Durant is not going to demand the final shot, Devin Booker is not going to demand the final shot and they aren’t as ball-centric as say a Luka (Doncic) who needs the ball. Devin Booker or Durant you can give them the ball late in the shot clock and they can hit it. Then I’ve got a guy in Deandre Ayton… he’s big, he can give you 17 points, he can run the floor and you need to have some rim protection.
“I don’t love Phoenix’s bench but we all know that in the playoffs the bench shrinks, you play seven to eight guys.”
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Veteran NBA journalist Chris Broussard went a step further during a recent episode of ‘First Things First’ on FS1.
“(The Suns) are absolutely the team to beat in the West and I think they’ll have a great chance to win the championship,” Broussard said.
“… They are stacked… if they don’t at least win the West, if they’re healthy, this is the biggest failure of Kevin Durant’s career.”
ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith echoed Broussard’s sentiment on ‘First Take’, declaring in the aftermath of the trade that “this is the best chance that the Phoenix Suns have of winning the NBA championship in my lifetime”.
FS1’s Nick Wright agreed that the addition of Durant was a significant boost to the Suns’ odds of winning this year’s NBA championship, but also warned that with expectation comes pressure.
“This is a no-brainer trade for Phoenix,” Wright said during a recent segment on ‘First Things First’.
“Kevin Durant was on a legacy free roll… Now, he is in a spot where I think he has more pressure on him than at any moment since OKC was up 3-1 on the Warriors. More pressure where if this team doesn’t make the (NBA) Finals… and if they don’t win the championship, folks are going to come for him.”
NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal also felt that Phoenix must capitalise this season.
“I think they have to get it done this year,” O’Neal said during TNT’s NBA broadcast.
“Kevin’s getting older, Chris is getting older and now with the mid-range mafia, that’s what they are calling them (Durant, Paul and Booker) now, they are gonna be very dangerous offensively.
“I didn’t like them giving up the young fella (Mikal Bridges) cause he was a great defensive player, but offensively they will be very potent and if those two guys (KD and CP3) can play together and play with high efficiency then they are going to be very hard to beat.”
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While virtually all of the reactions to the move were positive, some NBA pundits did express concerns regarding the Suns’ depth, especially considering the recent injury history of their top three players.
“KD will provide a jolt… but based on the injury history (of Durant, Booker and Paul), you have to have some concern,” FS1’s Shannon Sharpe said.
Phoenix legend Charles Barkley shared similar concerns during TNT’s NBA broadcast, highlighting that how the Suns fare in the league’s buyout market may go a long way to determining their championship fate.
“(The trade for Durant alone) is not gonna get it done. The West is so good now, you’re gonna need a good bench,” Barkley said.
“You can’t go to war with just KD, Booker, (CP3) and Ayton because the West is so loaded. If they play the Clippers, the Lakers now, and I haven’t even mentioned Memphis, your bench is gonna be really important… They gonna have to get some bigger bodies.
“… They gave up a lot (to get Durant) so the buyout market I’m gonna be watching that for my Suns cause with our (new) starting unit we are good to go, but to win three straight playoff series just to get to the (NBA) finals, your bench has got to be huge.”
While this bombshell trade has shaken up the entire NBA and seemingly flipped this season’s title race on its head, it came extremely close to not eventuating according to a recent report by ESPN’s Wojnarowski.
Wojnarowski recently revealed that his sources close to the situation claimed that after initial progress in negotiations between the Suns and Nets had stalled, Phoenix had turned their attention to securing a three-team deal they had been discussing with the Detroit Pistons which would’ve seen Atlanta’s John Collins land at the Suns.
However, Ishbia knew the significance of landing a player of Durant’s calibre and so instructed his general manager James Jones to reach out to his Nets counterpart, Sean Marks, sometime after 11pm on the US’ East Coast in the hopes of making one final push to secure Durant.
Soon after Ishbia and Nets owner Joe Tsai stepped in to put the finishing touches on the blockbuster trade which resulted in KD making his way to Phoenix.
It’s extremely rare that a team is presented the opportunity to trade for a superstar such as Durant and for a franchise that hasn’t found themselves in this position since trading for NBA legend Charles Barkley back in 1992 and hasn’t won an NBA championship in their 55-year history, this was too good an opportunity to pass up.
It took persistence and an owner willing to do whatever it takes to get the deal across the line, but by pairing KD with the likes of Booker, Paul, and Deandre Ayton – Ishbia, the Suns daring new owner, fulfilled the promise he made to head coach Monty Williams to provide him with enough talent to chase a championship.
This bombshell move clearly represents the Phoenix Suns pushing all their chips into the middle of the table in pursuit of a maiden NBA title and if they can achieve that lofty goal then no doubt history will look back on that late night moment as one of the greatest deals ever orchestrated by an owner in the game’s history.
