Kevin Durant Asks to Be Traded From the Nets
He and Irving came to Brooklyn hoping to win a championship together.
“We want to end our careers together,” Irving told reporters at their introductory news conference in 2019. “We want to do this as a team, and what better place to do it than Brooklyn?”
Durant was the second overall pick in the 2007 N.B.A. draft, selected by the Seattle SuperSonics, who then became the Oklahoma City Thunder. Durant spent nine seasons with the franchise before signing with Golden State in 2016. There, he helped Golden State win back-to-back championships in 2017 and 2018, and was named the M.V.P. of both those finals. Durant tore his Achilles’ tendon during the 2019 finals, which Golden State lost to the Toronto Raptors.
Irving, a seven-time All-Star, had also won a championship before joining the Nets — in 2016 with the Cleveland Cavaliers.
The 2019-20 season — the first with the Nets for Durant and Irving — was interrupted by the coronavirus, but for the Nets it was a wash anyway. Durant’s recovery from his Achilles’ tendon injury lasted all year and the Nets came up short in the playoffs. In the 2020-21 season, the team added James Harden midseason after he asked to be traded from the Houston Rockets, but it lost in the second round of the playoffs.
