The Phoenix Suns spent the majority of the season trying to build a winner around Kevin Durant. They chased Jimmy Butler for months hoping that he, Durant and Devin Booker could lead them to a championship. When it became clear that a Butler trade with Bradley Beal as the centerpiece was not feasible, however, Phoenix had to consider other options. One that grew increasingly plausible in the buildup to the deadline? Trading Durant himself.
Such a blockbuster ultimately did not come to pass. A deal with the Golden State Warriors reportedly came close, but Durant squashed it due to his disinterest in returning to the Warriors. The Miami Heat considered working out a Butler-plus-assets-for-Durant trade of their own, but elected in the end to send Butler to the Warriors. Durant will remain with the Suns, at least for now.
But trade rumors are rarely forgotten. According to Brian Windhorst on his Hoop Collective podcast, Durant “was not happy he was put into trade talks” and “that the biggest thing Kevin Durant was upset about, I think, not knowing he was involved in trade talks.” Reporting done by Windhorst and Ramona Shelburne showed that Durant’s camp did not find out about the rumors until Jan. 31, days after talks secretly began. “We should’ve gone through [Durant’s business partner, Rich Kleiman],” one Suns source told ESPN.
Some stars are more forgiving than others, and no two situations are similar. But the relationship between star and team is vital and often tenuous. Once trust is broken, it is often difficult to repair. Windhorst indicated on his podcast that while the two sides remain together for now, they may not be for long. “I think right now it is reasonable to forecast that Durant will be breaking up with the Suns in the summer,” Windhorst said. “He didn’t break up with them today, but it doesn’t look for the long-term forecast because he was really frustrated.”
Any possibility of a deal with Golden State or Miami, at least for the time being, died on Wednesday when the Heat sent Butler to the Warriors. Other teams, however, continued to pursue Durant up until the final deadline buzzer on Thursday, and they weren’t teams you’d expect. The Minnesota Timberwolves, for example, reportedly made a call, as first reported by Chris Haynes. Timberwolves star Anthony Edwards is a well-known admirer of Durant’s. Bob Myers revealed on ESPN’s trade deadline special that the Memphis Grizzlies checked in too. The Athletic reported before the deadline that the Mavericks were interested, and while the Rockets have held firm on their desire to see how their young roster handles the postseason, they are frequently mentioned as a possibility as well as they hold multiple future Phoenix first-round picks.
These deals were, on some level, a pipe dream. Most in-season blockbusters are. Miami and Golden State represented a unique alignment of assets and circumstances. The Heat had a star who could keep the Suns competitive right now. The Warriors had future assets that could help Phoenix later. The more teams that are involved in a deal, the easier it tends to be to make the money work. Every other possible suitor came with some significant drawback.
The Timberwolves, like the Suns, are a second-apron team. That means that neither of them were able to aggregate salaries in a trade, effectively making a legal deal impossible. Dallas wasn’t a second-apron team, but had no large salaries to send out. The biggest cap number they had outside of Kyrie Irving and Anthony Davis belongs to Klay Thompson at around $15.8 million. They would have had to aggregate almost all of their tradable role players to reach Durant’s max salary. The Grizzlies were in a similar boat, albeit with a far deeper bench. Houston had no obvious way of matching money without including starting point guard Fred VanVleet. That’s not a deal-breaker in the long run. We’re talking about Kevin Durant here. But given their determination to evaluate their youngsters, getting rid of the veteran floor-general that has overseen their growth over the past season-and-a-half before playing a single playoff game would have caused problems.
Theatrics of the 2025 deadline aside, there’s a reason moves like this tend to be more common in the offseason. Expanded rosters make it easier to complete unbalanced trades. A team’s salary situation tends to be more fluid, and that is indeed the case for Phoenix. Trading Jusuf Nurkic to the Hornets gave the Suns a path below the second apron this summer by letting go of new acquisitions Cody Martin and Vasilije Micic—neither of whom has a guaranteed contract. If they need to aggregate salary in a deal, they’ll be able to. Moving into a new league year unlocks another year of tradable first-round picks to most teams. Though teams above the second apron this season will have their 2032 first-round picks frozen, the majority of the league gains access to them in July. Put all of this together and constructing a trade that is both legal and satisfactory for Phoenix becomes much more realistic.
Take Minnesota as an example. Without aggregating salaries or dumping money elsewhere, trading for Durant was literally impossible for them. They don’t have a single player on their roster earning as much as Durant is this season. Their books, however, get a lot cleaner after the season. The projected second apron for next season is $207.8 million. Assuming Julius Randle opts in and Naz Reid opts out, the Timberwolves are looking at more than $30 million in second-apron wiggle room. They’d like to use some or all of that to re-sign Reid and/or Nickeil Alexander-Walker, but the door at least opens for them to get creative. Also notable: they’ll likely have certainty on the protected Pistons first-round pick they got in the Karl-Anthony Towns trade. That pick is top-13 protected this year and is currently slated to come in at No. 17. Barring a surprise decline from the Pistons, the Timberwolves will have that pick to trade with.
The Timberwolves have a variety of assets that could appeal to Phoenix in a Durant deal. Rudy Gobert would go a long way toward fixing their defense now. Rob Dillingham could be a long-term piece to pair with Devin Booker later. Jaden McDaniels checks both boxes. Depending on Phoenix’s asking price, there could be a real path to a deal here.
The same is true for the Mavs, whose circumstances change drastically over the summer on two levels. The first is financial, as neither of their mid-sized salary acquisitions, Caleb Martin or Max Christie, would have been eligible to get aggregated ahead of the deadline. That changes over the summer, given the Mavericks much more flexibility in constructing a money-matching package. Dallas also gains far more flexibility when it comes to trading draft picks over the summer. They entered this deadline period only able to deal their 2025 first-rounder. They proceeded to get an unprotected 2029 pick from the Lakers in the Luka Doncic deal, and then their 2032 first-round choice unlocks when the league year flips. That gives them three first-round picks to dangle along with promising young center Dereck Lively and any of their role players.
No team gains more financial flexibility on the trade market than Houston this summer. VanVleet has a team option, so the Rockets could conceivably let him go to create cap space if the wanted. Jalen Green and Alperen Sengun both start their rookie extensions, meaning they can be traded at much higher cap figures, which removes the need for an unwieldy four- or five-for-one deal. They’ll obviously have a better sense of how well equipped their young players are for postseason basketball, but they’ll also have a better idea of how valuable those future Suns picks are. Say, for instance, the Suns have a path to turning Durant into a great package of young players. Suddenly the idea of controlling Phoenix picks in 2027 and 2029 doesn’t look as valuable, so perhaps the Rockets decide that moving those picks while their value remains high is a priority. Rumors have suggested for quite some time that the Rockets would prefer to one day use those picks to land Devin Booker. Over the summer, they’ll have a better idea of how plausible that strategy will be moving forward.
A handful of other teams will surely look into Durant over the summer. Daryl Morey is the NBA’s most well-known star hunter. It’s hard to believe he wouldn’t look into some sort of offer built around Paul George, injured rookie Jared McCain and all of the draft picks the 76ers accumulated in the James Harden saga last season. Are the Lakers in enough of a rush to consider putting Austin Reaves on the table with their remaining draft capital and expiring contracts? Do any other young teams (Orlando, perhaps, or maybe even a reunion with a different ex-employer like Oklahoma City) want to hit the accelerator?
These are avenues the Suns would probably want to explore, and they were avenues that were mostly blocked off during the season. There are pros and cons to waiting, of course. Dallas has received widespread criticism for not at least opening the Doncic negotiations up for bidding from other teams, but the one advantage to their subterfuge was that it prevented Doncic from interfering with the process by steering things towards a specific destination. Obviously, Phoenix doesn’t have the element of surprise on its side anymore. Some measure of cooperation with Durant would be necessary, especially with only the 2025-26 season left on his contract
But the field opens up over the summer. As Butler learned in his desperate attempts to get to the Suns, the CBA doesn’t always cooperate. Whether Durant has a preferred destination or not, if he and the Suns do pursue a split over the summer, a fair and legal trade becomes much easier to find during the offseason.
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