As the NBA’s Feb. 6 trade deadline approached, rumors surfaced that the Golden State Warriors were working on a deal with the Phoenix Suns to bring Kevin Durant back to The Bay. Durant, though, quickly made it known that he wasn’t interested, causing the Warriors to pivot and ultimately acquire Jimmy Butler from Miami instead.
On Wednesday’s edition of Draymond Green’s podcast, “The Draymond Green Show with Baron Davis,” Durant explained why he wasn’t interested in being traded and also poked holes in some of the narratives that he said didn’t factor into his reasoning.
“I don’t feel like there was a need to make that big a change right now,” he said. “It didn’t make sense to me.”
Durant made it clear that he did not stiff-arm the Warriors due to any animosity between he and his former teammate Green, an argument backed by the fact he was saying it to Green’s face … on Green’s podcast. Nor did it have anything to do with the backlash he received when he went to Golden State as a free agent in 2016.
“You don’t want to play with Draymond no more. You don’t want to go back (to Golden State),” Durant said, mimicking his critics. “I’m like, ‘Yeah that s— is annoying, and I don’t like it, but I can play under anything.”
For Durant, his desire to stay in Phoenix had far more to do with pedestrian matters, such as the pain of packing up and moving in the middle of a season. “I didn’t want to move,” he said.
He also said he felt a commitment to the Suns, a squad beset by injuries that has seen 13 players start games this season.
“I’m trying to see this through to the end and see what we can really do with it,” Durant said. “I feel like I’m committed to my coaches and teammates and I want to see it through. I wanted to lock in on that.”
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What Durant can do with the Suns this season remains to be seen. While the 15-time All-Star has been as good as ever, averaging 26.9 points per game while shooting 40.2 percent from 3-point range, Phoenix has continued to flounder. The Suns have lost nine of their last 11 games, sinking to 11th place in the Western Conference at 27-31.
To that point, Durant stopped short of saying he expected to be in Phoenix longterm. Asked by Davis if he expected to finish his career with the Suns, Durant said, “I want my career to end on my terms, that’s the only thing. That’s the only thing I’m worried about, you know what I’m saying? … I want to keep putting in that work to make that choice on my own.”
In the end it’s about control, and Durant wants to have a say in how and where he finishes out his Hall of Fame career. And as far as Golden State, he expressed pride in what he helped build there from 2016 to 2019, when he was on the roster for three of the Warriors’ four championships.
“This ain’t just no regular opportunity,” Durant said of signing with the Warriors in 2016.
“I didn’t know exactly how it’d play out obviously, but it just felt like this would be just a huge, huge shift and moment in not just to people that consume the game, but in how the game is played itself. … This seemed like something I can’t turn down right now. It turned out to be that big.”
This time around, the opportunity was just not the same.
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(Photo: Alika Jenner / Getty Images)
