Kevin Durant requested a trade from the Brooklyn Nets before the start of the 2022-23 season and wanted to get traded to the Phoenix Suns. However, the Nets didn’t honor Durant’s trade request until February 9.
“I did try. They just refused to get rid of me,” Durant said. “I tried, but time ran out. I wasn’t going to miss no games because of this whole thing. So once the season rolled around, I was just like whatever happens, it happens, and I just get ready for the season. So it worked out perfect timing, the way it’s supposed to.”
Durant joined the Nets in the summer of 2019. He missed the entire 2019-20 season recovering from his Achilles injury. Durant played in 129 games with the Nets before getting traded to the Suns last season.
NBA NEWS & RUMORS: Kevin Durant, Brooklyn Nets, Phoenix Suns Updates
“In Brooklyn? Yeah, it just wasn’t no consistency, no continuity on who we were as a team,” Durant said. “And when you want to win a championship, you’ve got to build an identity from Day 1, and it was just a lot of circumstances that were out of the players’ control that got in the way of us building our continuity.”
The Nets won only one postseason series in the Durant era. The franchise had Durant, Kyrie Irving and James Harden on the team at one point. Harden requested a trade and was traded to the Philadelphia 76ers and Irving requested a trade and was sent to the Dallas Mavericks.
NBA NEWS & RUMORS: Kevin Durant, Brooklyn Nets, Phoenix Suns Updates
“That’s just the business of basketball,” Durant said. “That’s just the NBA in general. But we all got better as individual players, and we learned a lot from that experience — everybody from executives to players — and we can go about our NBA experience with more knowledge now.”
For the Suns this season, Durant is averaging 31.4 points, 7.1 rebounds and 5.5 assists.
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