Et is quite a task in a company like the NBA to paralyze an important part of the business – the tree-change-yourself game after the end of a season. But it is possible, as the Brooklyn Nets’ best man has demonstrated in recent weeks.
That was probably not Kevin Durant’s intention when, at the end of June, he let it be known that the constellation at the New York club no longer suits him, even though he had extended his contract there just twelve months earlier. But it had this effect. Players of his caliber – an excellent goal shooter whose qualities would make almost any team a title contender – are rare on the market and give many teams a lot of thought.
Durant misjudges
Bullying yourself out of a club is an art in the NBA, with its many restrictive regulations and a collective agreement that severely restricts a truly free choice of workplace. Not least because the most important mechanism – a player exchange negotiated by interested clubs – lives on the principle that both sides must put the same value on the scales in the transaction. The salary volume provides a clue. But there is expressly no transfer of money, only of players (or of draft places in the annual talent draws).
But the negotiations between the Nets and a number of interested parties led to no result for weeks. No one was willing to part with one of the top talents Nets management was speculating on for the almost $200 million (201 million euro) Durant, who tore his Achilles tendon in 2019 and is already 33 years old: the Boston Celtics not Marcus Smart, New Orleans Pelicans not Brandon Ingram, Toronto Raptors not Scottie Barnes. And the Phoenix Suns not from their draft spots.
Nobody wants to swap places with him: Kevin Durant, the best player in the Brooklyn Nets
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Image: AFP
Brooklyn, on the other hand, was not satisfied with alternative solutions for fear of unnecessarily making things worse. The result: Durant stays. And after a week-long break, during which the chief managers everywhere had interrupted their own personnel planning as if spellbound, because everyone wanted to wait and see how the dominoes fall and what opportunities arise for further transactions, life has now returned to the player bazaar.
Which should also benefit someone like Dennis Schröder, who misjudged a year ago at the Los Angeles Lakers in contract talks like Durant now. However, he paid a lot of extra money in the process. Hopes for a four-year, $100 million deal were dashed. The only option left was a one-year, $5.89 million deal with the Boston Celtics, which led to an unsentimental swap just months later that landed Schröder with the Houston Rockets. Since then he has been sitting on the waiting bench and hoping for new offers.
The bush drums report that at least the Lakers are interested in the player from Braunschweig. The problem for the 28-year-old: All the club can offer him is the collectively agreed minimum salary for someone who has played in the NBA as long as he has – since 2013. That’s no more than 2.5 million dollars (2 .5 million euros) for one season. It’s anything but lucrative. A basketball professional of his quality class can earn that much money with top teams in Europe.
