In A Shocking Twist, Kevin Durant Believes That Players Demanding Trades Is Actually Good For The NBA

Chris Coduto. Getty Images.

Player empowerment in the NBA has become a powerful tool, especially when we're talking about the best of the best. At this point, NBA contracts are worth less than the paper they're written on. If a guy wants out, he's going to get out. Tha could be in Year 1, Year 2, Year 3, it doesn't really matter. Oh, you have a star signed long term? Congrats! In today's NBA, that doesn't mean shit.

This of course is especially true of a star like Kevin Durant. When asked about player movement and trade demands, you'll be shocked to learn that not only does KD love them and think they're great, it's also helping the league

I am shocked that this fella

A guy that submitted two separate trade requests in the same season despite being in Year 1 of his 4 year max extension who also happened to leave his first NBA team ever in free agency to join a GS powerhouse thinks these are actually great moves that helps the NBA.

Here's the thing with what KD said. He's technically not wrong. Player movement is exciting as hell! Trade demands, especially ones made by the Kevin Durant's of the world make the trade deadline week must watch stuff. You can't sit there and tell me you didn't find all the drama and chaos from two weeks ago exciting. Of course you did!

Except, ya know….if you happened to be a Nets fan. I look at this in a similar way I look at tampering. Everyone loves tampering and doesn't give a shit about it if your favorite team lands someone awesome. Then it's fun, right? But what about when someone on your favorite team gets tampered with and they leave? You end up crying about it like Mark Cuban and force the NBA to investigate it.

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The same is true with trade demands. Yes, it was very entertaining to see likes of James Harden, Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, and Ben Simmons demand trades in recent seasons. Unless you were a Rockets, Nets, and Sixers fan. OK, maybe that last one isn't true because no Sixers fan gave a shit about Simmons demanding a trade but you get my point. I imagine everyone else wasn't having too much fun with those situations. If you don't root for those teams, the chaos and trade demands are like crack. You can't get enough of the drama, Twitter jokes, etc.

But take Nets fans right now. They went from "we're in contention for a title" to "maybe we'll hold onto a top 6 spot" in literally a blink of an eye. Sure they brought in young and exciting players who they can root for and build with, but I highly doubt the last few weeks were fun or entertaining for them. One would think players would care about the fans they currently are playing for, but that appears to not be the case.

Whether it was KD

"I don't think it's bad for the league," Durant said Saturday during his All-Star news conference. "It's bringing more eyes to the league, more people are more excited. The tweets that I get; the news hits that we got from me being traded, Kyrie being traded; it just brings more attention to the league and that's really what rakes the money in, when you get more attention. So, I think it's great for the league, to be honest."

or Kyrie

"It's a bad situation," Irving said Saturday. "Why doesn't anyone have the ability to ask for trades? That's my question. When did it become terrible to make great business decisions for yourself and your happiness and peace of mind? Not every employer you're going to get along with, so if you have the chance to go somewhere else and you're doing it legally, I don't think there's a problem with it."

I'm starting to get the sense they don't give a flying fuck about any of that. The Kyrie quote was my favorite though. Nobody refuses to accept that 99.9% of the drama and issues that seem to follow him everywhere he's been have been self-inflicted. Nope, he just didn't get along with his employer! It sounded more like he was upset that a franchise had expectations of him as their star player and someone they are paying a ton of money to, and they just wanted him to show up and do his job. That's a bad situation? We know a big reason why Kyrie left was because the Nets were iffy on his extension. So, if they decided to give him a full max extension like he wanted, would it still be a bad situation that he wanted out of? Of course not! He would have taken the max extension!

So yeah, from an interest and money perspective, I'm sure the NBA loves trades. Trade deadline week made waves during Super Bowl week which isn't easy to do, but I'm also sure the league doesn't love teams handing out these massive 5+ years fully guaranteed contracts only to be forced to immediately trade that guy. There has to be a balance there somewhere because players will just say it's bullshit that they could sign that extension, want to stay, and the team trades them away anyway. I'm not sure they're wrong there either.

I don't know what the solution is, to be honest. I think there's nothing wrong with players wanting to control where they play. I also think there's nothing wrong that a team should have a certain level of expectation when they hand out these massive extensions. This reminds me of an idea I had a few years ago about this very topic 

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Does that make sense? Maybe, maybe not. But it's also not my job to figure it out. That's on Adam Silver if he ever manages to wake up and decide to actually address some issues going on in his league.

So while I don't think KD is completely wrong, my guess is he'll be dragged for these comments. Given what happened in GS, and how the tenure went in BKN, I can't imagine these are things that people who aren't Suns fans want to hear. I'd just say be careful because after this little 2 year window, it's clear that KD has no problem demanding another trade to go somewhere else.