The Ryen Russillo Podcast - BONUS: Durant Wants Out of Brooklyn

Episode Date: June 30, 2022

Russillo reacts to the news that Kevin Durant has requested a trade from the Brooklyn Nets. Host: Ryen Russillo Producers: Kyle Crichton and Steve Ceruti Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

had to jump back on and share some thoughts 10 minutes on durant he's asked out of brooklyn so we'll get right to it a bonus emergency part two of the ryan rossillo podcast kevin durant wants out of brooklyn woj had the report less than two hours ago. I don't know that this was a huge surprise. If you listen to Bobby Marks, who alluded to it, and also some stuff he said kind of off the air, he's like, man, I think it might get messy up there. And he didn't say specifically what this is,

but I think we all know now. Apparently, Durant told Josiah, the Brooklyn Nets owner, directly, I want to trade. I want out of here. And Woj also reported that half the league has called Brooklyn about Durant in these trades. I mean, this is probably wide open here, but I'm not sure that it is totally wide open,

even if there are a bunch of offers. Because what we need to look at is there's a response to what the report is. Woj also said that Phoenix and Miami are kind of top of the list. I asked a handful of teams, like, hey, give me who you think it would be. More votes for Phoenix than anybody else. Miami came in second. There was even one of my favorite votes from a team that knows they have no chance. Just us was the quote back to me, but I knew that they were sort of kidding.

But now let's look at Durant in history, okay? Because what kind of leverage does Kevin Durant have? He's about to kick in a new extension here, four years. He's owed $194 million moving forward. Back in the olden days, I don't know, three years ago, we used to look at players, if they were going into the last year of their contract and wanted to trade, they had all the leverage and they could say, not only do I want out of here, I only want to go to one or two of these teams because the market for that player wouldn't be that great because the team trading for them would

think, well, are we trading for this guy for just one year? It worked for Toronto. With Kyrie Irving, Boston really sent out that much, but it didn't work for them. And that was two years left on it. We've also seen some changes we saw with the Harden deal. It was into his second year, right? AD was almost traded, if you believe some of the reports, who knows, but that was with still another year remaining when that was mid-season with New Orleans. So we had gone from a year left on a deal to then going into your second year, but it still felt like it somewhat limited the market because the player could just say, hey, you can trade for me. I'm not re-signing with you. And then it turned into what we saw this year with Ben Simmons. And even there was a sprinkling of some Dame Lillard rumors, although it now looks like he might get a new extension on top of the

one that he just did. Ben Simmons doesn't want to play for Philadelphia again, but he had four years left. Max Money, his rookie extension about to kick in. We talked about it going, this is new. I talked about it as if I'm like, this is kind of pioneer territory here because this extension is just about to kick in. What kind of leverage does he have? And here's the leverage that every player simply has, and they can just not play. And that's what every team is scared to death of. And here's the leverage that every player simply has, and they can just not play. And that's what every team is scared to death of. And they talk about it, not publicly, but they'll talk about it. Like if a guy decides to go get a second opinion from a different guy that isn't our doctor and says his knee or his back is messed up, then there's not really much we can do. So that's the

leverage any player could go with. And at the time there, it felt like Simmons wasn't going to go with that when he showed up to Philadelphia. But then he went with non-physical limitations. when he showed up to Philadelphia. But then he went with non-physical limitations and that became a much debated topic. But that was something new. This is kind of the new frontier. As one very smart basketball person told me a summer ago, he goes, this is now the transfer portal. You get the contract. You don't do the short deals. You do the long deals. You take every last dollar, maximize as much as you can, and then you worry about the rest later because it's not leverage with a year left or going to two years. It's leveraged as soon as the extension kicks in. So we could pretend that Durant has none because it's this four-year extension. But like I just said, it's still Kevin

Durant, and you can't just trade him to someplace he has no interest in whatsoever because that team puts together the best package because then Durant may even plays it out for a year, is miserable, and then that team's kind of dealing with this all over again. So we could pretend that the four years limits Durant's influence on where he goes, but that's not really the way any of this has worked the last couple years, and players continue to flex more and more of their power. So if we look at the Phoenix part of this, which we all should have spent more time talking about, because once Vegas has a weird odd switch, like they did with DeAndre Ayton's future team,

Brooklyn, there was a massive swing there where Brooklyn became a completely different odd. And you're like, wait, what's going on there? Well, Vegas usually does tend to know about some of these things. I remember the first time I ever heard about Kawhi Leonard shutting it down from San Antonio, it was through somebody who knew a gambler

that was like, hey, are you hearing anything about this? And I was like, I haven't heard anything about it. I checked with somebody who would know and they didn't get back to me at all. And I went, okay, that actually means something is up. So you probably still have to trade Durant somewhere that he wants to go because the next team, even if it's four years of Durant supposedly under contract, it doesn't mean that it's four years of peace. I think we've learned that. The Phoenix part does make sense. It makes some basketball sense. Durant to Phoenix would make them a contender and you'd move Aiton out. Aiton's a nice piece to get back. It's more than just a ton of draft picks, but I'd also be asking for another player. And I'd also be asking,

I don't know if Bridges would be available and something like this. I'd also be telling Phoenix, hey, if DeJounte Murray is worth three firsts in a potential swap, four first potential picks with two years left and being DeJounte Murray and not Kevin Durant, I'm going to need five or six picks. It can sound absurd. You can tell me I'm crazy. Kawhi and Paul George if you find a way to get my guy to your team. That's why I'm asking for everything. I'm asking for Shade Kildress Alexander. I'm asking for swaps. I'm asking for protect. I'm asking for it all because I have you over a barrel. And that's what you should be doing if you're the Nets and you're dealing with anybody. But specifically Phoenix, you're telling Phoenix, hey, he wants to go to you. He's going to be happy for however long NBA happiness even allows itself to happen in today's world. So that would be part of it.

The Miami thing is, when you write it out on paper, and as we said in the Bobby Marks podcast just hours ago, never underestimate the flexibility of what can happen behind the scenes and the things that we don't understand. If it were to be a BAM deal with Miami going to a third team and Durant coming through and everybody

liking what they do and somebody doing somebody a favor. But the problem is, is because the Nets did take on Ben Simmons off a rookie extension, you can't actually trade for Bam, who's in the same category. So that would limit that. So then you start doing the combination of Lowry, Hero, Duncan Robinson, and that Miami has less control over their own future picks. It doesn't match up on paper. I don't know if a Chicago Zach Levine deal is even close to these things. I don't know if there'd be some mystery team.

I know Simmons was tweeted about Zion. It's a lot of fun, and it might solve a New Orleans problem, and it also might solve a Brooklyn problem. I'm feeling like you do have this kind of generational star to build around who also isn't healthy all that much. So yes, there's probably far more options than we're talking about right now. But just because Durant is on the first year of a four-year extension worth over 200 or almost $200 million, it doesn't mean he has zero say. We need to learn that lesson. What if the Nets said, we'd like to combine this and make it even a bigger deal. And because we don't want Kyrie here by himself, we probably don't even want Kyrie here that much. We thought

if we kept Kyrie here, that would keep Durant happier. He doesn't seem to care. He's moved on from it. I don't know what the Kyrie part of it is specifically to their relationship, but I could not hang up quicker. I would say, Kyrie is your fucking problem. I'll take the guy that still likes playing basketball. That's a non-starter. Now, could that mean something weird down the road where Kyrie does come back and he sits out and he doesn't want to play and then he demands a trade? I don't know. Maybe does this open back up the Lakers

Westbrook thing because then the Nets start to think, well, we're not going to be good this year anyway. Let's just have Russ get a ton of stats and maybe get a pick from the Lakers and we start trying to recoup all of these picks through these two deals separately from the picks that we gave up in the original Harden from Houston deal. All of this stuff is on the table. I wouldn't rule any of it out. Now, here's another question. Does anyone care that Ben Simmons is still on this basketball team? It doesn't seem

like anybody does. I think everybody keeps forgetting. It was kind of funny because Simmons couldn't really handle being the number two for a playoff championship supposed contending team in Philadelphia. And it felt like, hey, the number three doesn't have to take shots, play defense, being a five out guy, make some plays and passes. Now it's like, wait, you're going to tell Simmons he's the first option and they're building around him. He's not the kind of guy you would want to build around either. Now, to summarize all of this, if you ask, has this entire Kyrie Durant, adding the Harden, the Simmons pieces,

all of it been an absolute disaster? The simple answer is yes. The next thing you'd have to ask is, will this impact the way teams deal with players in the future? You're going to see a lot of people say yes. And I'm going to tell you they're all wrong. I used to make Nets culture jokes because I just thought it was kind of funny. You know, Kyrie, Durant, they saw what was happening here

and they just wanted to buy into the culture. And it was a nice little group they had there with Kenny Atkinson. But that team went 42-40 and their starting five was D'Angelo Russell,

Joe Harris, Jared Allen, nice player, Kuroots, Jared Dudley, Levert started 20 plus games apiece. Again, they lost in the first round. You will blow that team up 100 out of 100 times, as cool as your culture may be,

for the opportunity to grab a player like Durant and literally anybody else that he would want to play with. I mean, they even did it with DeAndre Jordan. So there's, I don't know if it's an old guy thing. You know, we can get really pissy at times about how the special people among us can conduct themselves where they work. And sometimes it's hard for a lot of us to process that. Like, oh, these guys, like I'll even admit, like, I think I've accepted how special these guys all are and they can kind of call their own shots, but I'm not going to say that I love all of it all the time. And we've been over that, but to then play it out as if, well,

not sure how the next team will handle this when a star says, Hey, I want to come to you. And this is how we're going to do it because you only play five guys. So it'd be a really easy thing to say and talk yourself into that some massive lesson has been learned for NBA franchises in the aftermath of this Nets disastrous wake. But it's not going to change anybody's approach. It may change it for a specific player. But if somebody really great decides he wants to come play for your basketball team, you're going to do whatever you can to get that guy in the future. So don't be fooled by the reaction to how bad these Nets years have been. Thank you. you