With the 2022 Las Vegas Summer League on the books and training camps not scheduled to open for more than two months, many NBA executives are preparing for the holidays, which could delay the dissolution of the league’s top commercial candidates, including Networks star Kevin Durant.
“From my understanding, the trade talks involving Kevin Durant have slowed down considerably,” he said. (Wednesday) during an appearance on ESPN’s Get Up, Brian Windhurst said.video link via Talkin’ NBA). “You can still get some Nets members on the phone if you want to make an offer, but I’m told they don’t make outgoing calls aggressively, it was said.
“The league is about to go on its first major holiday in two years. People are scattered across Europe and the national parks, and Kevin Durant is still just a network. I don’t think that will change in the short term future.”
As Windhorst points out, the 2020 and 2021 seasons have been compressed by changes to the NBA calendar due to COVID-19. This is the league’s first full natural offseason since 2019.
Not everyone will be on vacation for the next couple of months, so the trade discussions will certainly start in August or early September — or even later this month. However, a breach in the NBA calendar numbers is slowing the momentum towards any major deals. This applies to Jazz‘s Donovan Mitchell As Windhurst said.
“The situation of Donovan Mitchell is really heading toward a dead end,” Windhurst said on Get Up (video link via Talkin’ NBA). “The poster shock is there for the asking price, and jazz music is like, ‘Look, we’re not in a hurry. We will sit and wait for you to meet her. The teams say, “We will not increase (our offers).” And Donovan Mitchell isn’t pushing it, so I hope everyone enjoys their summer.”
Here are some other trade rumors from around the NBA:
- Windhorst suggested during Wednesday’s episode of Get Up (video link) it does not see a file Keri Irving/Russell Westbrook trade between Networks And the Lakers Especially likely at this point: “It was discussed weeks ago and it has not progressed.”
- Windhurst also said the motive behind Durant’s trade order from Brooklyn remains somewhat ambiguous, which may be one reason why there has been no real progress toward a solution. Talk to the owner Ju Tsaiand gave a reason (the reason he wanted to trade), but I’m not sure Networks 100% understand that,” Windhurst said. “I think the next step in this — except to change the mind of the team to meet the Nets price, which I don’t see at this point in the calendar — I think we’ll have to wait to hear from Kevin Durant about how open he is to rebooting the nets. Here we go, where he rests. Everyone is in the summer, and they sit back and wait for that to happen.”
- Appear in Spotify Live session with Marc SteinTony Jones of The Athletic confirmed that Jazz Have commercial discussions with this season’s teams about the base Mike Conleybut admitted he wasn’t sure there was a lot of market for Conley at this point (hat tip to hoops). Conley capped $22.68 million in 2022/23, with a partial guarantee ($14.32 million) on his $24.36 million salary over 23/24.