Big baby Kevin Durant repulses me.
Marc Stein was saying that according to NBA execs, KD will more likely retire than play for the Nets.
Fine by me. Go away, Kevin Durant.
He recently then tweeted he’s not retiring, so I don’t know what to figure.
Perhaps he’ll put on his big boy pants and play for Brooklyn after all. 
I wonder if Brooklyn will be able to recoup part of the money they paid him, and fine him for missing games.
He doesn’t play, he doesn’t get paid. Simple as that. However Durant is already pretty rich.
The problem is that Brooklyn can’t really do anything with the money, they just save it. And they have a dead spot on their roster. And one of the five best players alive isn’t competing which means the chances for Brooklyn to remain relevant as a team take a huge hit.
Folks have argued that Durant is so competitive and so loves playing basketball that he is unlikely to truly holdout for long in what is almost certainly his waning peak years in his mid-30’s. But we’ll see - he’s a stubborn one and is endlessly restless trying to find that satisfaction in life that obviously still eludes him. I think he should just quit and become a reclusive driftwood carver in Maine - see if that gets his head straight 
.
I think Durant is a very insecure person. What other kinda guy, arguably a top-5 player in the league at that time, joins a team that won 73 games in its previous year? And he wasn’t even the best player on those Warriors teams that earned two championships. That’s got to eat at him.
I think you could make an argument he was. Not sure I buy it - Curry’s gravity warps the entire game around him. But Durant won those Finals MVP trophies and the argument can be made that in isolation he is the more complete two-way player.
But I don’t think it’s the accolades, exactly. Steph Curry was beloved as a drafted, high-character, astonishingly skilled player in a way KD could never really equal. For the average fan in the Bay Area Durant was friend-zoned 
. Really liked, but never quite loved. And Durant’s trophies turned out not to be enough for him. He needed his own version of being the central character (never mind he probably already had that in OKC, sans trophies). He thought he could find that complete package in Brooklyn - trophies and being THE MAN. But now it is just ashes and he has to try somewhere else.
I genuinely feel he might just die in old age still feeling vaguely unfulfilled, despite being one of the most lauded players of all time.
Yeah I lost all respect for the man for that shit. One of the best players in the world, in his prime, and he’s ring chasing like a 40 year old has been? Pathetic.
The NBA has announced its Christmas Day schedule for this coming season. The Memphis Grizzlies will appear on Christmas Day for the first time ever, leaving the Charlotte Hornets as the only team never to do so.
UGH we’re really going through this again with Kevin Durant. Apparently, the Celtics have emerged as the front-runners for him. If he joins the Celtics, this would be the second time he joined a team that made it to the Finals in the previous year.
LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers have agreed to a two-year, $97.1 million contract extension with a player option for 2024-25 which will make James the highest-paid player in the NBA in terms of career guaranteed money ($532 million). He is ineligible to be traded this coming season because the second year of his extension exceeds a 5% raise.
This basically makes LeBron a Laker for as long as he chooses.
James turns 38 on Dec. 30, and thus is limited to signing two-year deals because of his age, under the terms of the collective bargaining agreement.
The NBA released its schedule today.
I could have sworn they’d already done this, but the Lakers will retire Pau Gasol’s #16 jersey on March 7, 2023, when they host one of Gasol’s former teams, the Memphis Grizzlies.
I had seen his jersey hanging up in the rafters already, but it was a Photoshop job on a “what-if?” article.
Udonis Haslem has signed a one-year deal with the Miami Heat to return for his 20th NBA season. He has played less than 20 games in each of the last six seasons, including four games in 2019-20 and only one in 2020-21. Nevertheless, I suppose he’s technically going to be only the third player to play 20 or more seasons for the same franchise, the other two being Kobe Bryant (Lakers) and Dirk Nowitzki (Mavericks).
Haslem must be a great locker room guy or he has dirt on every executive in the Heat organization. To your point, Haslem has only played in 872 career games; Kobe played in 1,346 in 20 seasons and Dirk played in 1,522 over 21 seasons.
This is what pops up when I Googled, “Why do the Heat keep re-signing Udonis Haslem?”
TLDR: Yeah, veteran leadership and contributing to a winning culture.
A couple of nights ago, in the pro-am game in Seattle, Oklahoma City Thunder third-overall pick Chet Holmgren suffered what appeared to be an ankle injury while guarding LeBron James.
ESPN has released its updated Power Rankings. Warriors are first, Celtics are second. Pacers are 27th. Ugh.
Well, they did get the #1 pick in the draft, so I imagine demand for early season tickets will be unusually high.
Kevin Durant has reached an agreement with the Nets front office to stay in Brooklyn. He has rescinded his trade demand.
Huh, so he’s going to have to “somehow put up with” the terrifying, dastardly, moustache-twirling, (and occasionally evil) Mr. Nash.