Despite being one of the NBA’s very best players, Kevin Durant has often been criticized by fans, and his habit of jumping from team to team every few years is the biggest reason why.
After the Brooklyn Nets traded Kyrie Irving to the Dallas Mavericks, Durant quickly asked to be traded himself, and the Brooklyn Nets granted his wish, sending him to the Phoenix Suns.
Despite the haranguing he has to deal with, Durant says he thinks it’s good that superstars can demand trades and dictate where they want to play whenever they want.
Suns’ Kevin Durant says trade requests are “great for the league” despite criticism: “Teams have been trading players and making acquisitions for a long time. Now a player can dictate where he wants to go, leave in free agency or demand a trade, it’s just part of the game now.” pic.twitter.com/zyzphfrp2f
— Ben Golliver (@BenGolliver) February 18, 2023
Durant first asked the Nets to move him last summer, and the Suns were the one team he was most linked to at the time.
Now they will have a stacked starting lineup that also includes future Hall of Fame point guard Chris Paul, star shooting guard Devin Booker and center Deandre Ayton.
However, the question is whether they will have enough depth, not to mention defense, to win the NBA championship after giving up 3-and-D wing Mikal Bridges and key reserve Cameron Johnson in the Durant deal.
The “player empowerment” phenomenon of the past decade or so has been a polarizing topic around the NBA, and while it is good for a superstar that is stuck on a bad or mediocre team to be able to move to a winning team, superstars that switch teams ever few years as Durant does can be problematic.
In 2016, he joined the already-loaded Golden State Warriors as a free agent, and they won the next two world titles — only to lose him in 2019, forcing them to spend a couple of years reshuffling their deck.
When Durant teamed up with Irving in Brooklyn afterward, everyone proclaimed their new team as the league’s next transcendent squad, but it failed to even reach the Eastern Conference Finals.
If Durant doesn’t get the Suns their first Larry O’Brien Trophy, the criticism he receives will only get louder.
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