Life in the NBA changes fast. The Brooklyn Nets have learned that. Last Tuesday, they were 31-19, sitting 4th in the East and preparing to get Kevin Durant back. Then they walked into Boston to play the Celtics. Since that point they lost to the Celtics again, Kyrie Irving requested a trade and got traded, and Kevin Durant was traded. Doomsday has arrived in Brooklyn. Durant and T.J. Warren head to the Phoenix Suns for Mikal Bridges, Cam Johnson, Jae Crowder, unprotected first round picks in 2023, 2025, 2027, and 2029, and a pick swap in 2028. It’s a franchise altering deal for both sides, so where do they go from here?
Let’s start in Phoenix. On January 18th, Phoenix was spiraling, with Devin Booker out the Suns had fallen to 12th place with a 21-24 record and it was looking bleak. Since that point, Phoenix is 9-2 moving to 30-26, tied for 4th in the West, turning their season around. They also just got Booker back on Tuesday night and traded for Kevin Durant… KEVIN DURANT. Talk about a reinforcement at the trade deadline. This sets Phoenix’s starting 5 as, likely, Chris Paul, Devin Booker, Torrey Craig, Kevin Durant, and Deandre Ayton. That is an elite 5 man unit and with T.J. Warren, Cameron Payne, Landry Shamet, and Jock Landale off of the bench, Phoenix is dangerous. However, there was an arms race in the West and a lot of teams got better. The Lakers, Clippers, Warriors, and Mavericks all got better while the teams at the top, the Grizzlies and Nuggets, got marginally better. How does it fit? Well, offensively Kevin Durant is a seamless fit, because he is Kevin Durant and he is a seamless fit everywhere he goes because of how good he is without the ball and defensively he will be able to roam off the ball and be a secondary rim protector that Phoenix has been looking for. The depth is an issue. Warren is injury prone, Shamet is bad defensively, Payne is too little and a streaky shooter, and while they acquired Darius Bazley from Oklahoma City for Dario Saric (a good trade), the overall depth is not good. Mikal Bridges is also a huge loss, he is really good and has been the Suns’ 2nd best player this season as his game has taken a leap this season. Phoenix does not have a ton of guys you trust in a playoff series but Kevin Durant, Devin Booker, Chris Paul, and Deandre Ayton is a really good 4 to have on your team and makes Phoenix one of the top two favorites in the West.
The restart in Brooklyn has arrived. A Durant trade has been inevitable since the moment he requested a trade on June 30th and Phoenix has been the place he has wanted to be since that very day in June. The timing is shocking, deals of this magnitude usually do not happen in season, but Durant getting traded is not too surprising. Where does it leave Brooklyn? In a bad spot, no question but not as bad as it was when they traded all of their picks for Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett. Mikal Bridges is really good, finishing 2nd in Defensive Player of the Year voting last season, and can be a building block for the Nets. Nic Claxton, Dorian Finney-Smith, Royce O’Neale, and Cam Johnson are all good defensive players as well. They should be a really good defensive team as they have a lot of wings and a lot of guys who can switch and are just good defensive players. Scoring, on the other hand, will be an issue. Spencer Dinwiddie is good and will help in that department at the point guard spot and Cam Thomas can do Cam Thomas things now, which is seemingly scoring 40 points every night, so that will be fun to watch unfold but overall they will struggle to score baskets. Ben Simmons is still there so there’s that. It has been a disaster this season for Simmons, coming off of offseason back surgery, Brooklyn’s is best off, for now, betting on him becoming who he used to be back in his Philadelphia days now that Durant and Irving are gone. Doomsday in Brooklyn is here and though we knew it would come eventually, the timing was shocking and it still hurts for Nets fans everywhere.
The draft picks are a big part of this too. Again Phoenix is sending 2023, 2025, 2027, and 2029 first round picks along with a pick swap in 2028. That is a massive risk for the Suns. When the Nets traded for James Harden it was a low risk move because the 3 stars were so good and young enough to justify it, look how that turned out. Trading picks that far into the future always hurts on the back end of the deal. Assuming that the picks are definitely going to be at the end of the first round seven years from now is something we cannot predict. Of course the Suns should make this move 100/100 times but that does not change the fact that there is a ton of risk involved here. The time to win the title is now and Phoenix knows that.
Kevin Durant has been traded, and it happened at one in the morning on the east coast (I was sleeping and I am not happy about it). In one of the biggest blockbusters in NBA history the landscape of the league has drastically changed. Phoenix is all in and Brooklyn is left wondering, what happened?
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