After Kevin Durant issued his trade request, there was one team that most expected to stay out of talks with the Nets in the Golden State Warriors, considering they’d just gone through a breakup with the star three years ago.
However, there were rumblings that the Warriors reached out and at least had some preliminary conversations about what a deal would look like. Obviously, Durant ended up not being dealt to Golden State or anywhere else and will remain in Brooklyn for the next season, but the Warriors, with a number of recent lottery picks and some big salaries, actually had one of the best potential offers to make — although we don’t know if they put anything close to that on the table.
One of the reasons the assumption was the Warriors wouldn’t be that interested is how things ended with Durant, as he seemed pretty over being in the Bay, most famously getting into a bench spat with Draymond Green early in his final season. However, internally, the Warriors top star was very much on board with a KD reunion, as Stephen Curry told Rolling Stone in a recent interview.
Curry said he thought KD was misunderstood and said he “loves” Durant and playing with him, explaining that he was all in on bringing the star back if the front office felt it was the right decision.
“If you said, ‘Oh, KD’s coming back, and we’re gonna play with him,’ I had so much fun playing with him those three years, I’d be like, ‘Hell, yeah!’ Then you have to think: What does that actually mean? What does it look like? You tell me I’m playing with [current Warriors teammates Andrew Wiggins, Jordan Poole, and Draymond Green], I’m like, ‘Hell, yeah!’ There’s all types of emotion and things that happen to the league. And if anybody’s saying that you wouldn’t entertain that conversation — no disrespect to anybody on our team — but you don’t know how things work. But you also understand, like, if we run this thing back, I’ve got complete confidence in my team that we can win it again, as constructed.
“So, all those things were true. And it started with me wanting to play with KD at the beginning. Yeah, it’s about winning, it’s about having fun, playing the game of basketball. And that was part of the reaction of, like, ‘Yeah, it’d be amazing.’ What does that actually mean?”
It’s as honest as you’ll get on this kind of subject from a star, but it’s also not particularly earth-shattering info. It’s notable that Curry would still want to play with KD but also he doesn’t seem to have been stumping either way for a trade, just giving his support for whatever the front office decided. That’s wise as you don’t want to alienate your teammates that just won a title with you by pushing for a trade that would have to send a few of them out, and Curry knows that which is why he’s sure to say he’d be down for running it back or shaking it up.