Kevin Durant played with the Brooklyn Nets for two and a half seasons. Technically, he’s been in Brooklyn for four seasons, but his first year with the Nets was a wash as he rehabbed from an Achilles injury, and he only played half of this season before being traded to the Phoenix Suns.
Durant is now going to try the super team thing again out west, and he finally talked to the media as a member of his new team one week after he asked for a trade to Phoenix.
Durant may have asked to leave Brooklyn, but he doesn’t harbor any ill will for his old franchise. “It was a lot of ups and downs, but I loved the grind,” Durant explained, per ESPN. “And everybody in Brooklyn loved the grind, too, so I built a family over there. They’re going to always be part of my journey. So we didn’t accomplish what we wanted to accomplish as far as winning a championship, but I enjoyed the grind. And everybody there, we tried our hardest every day, regardless of what was going on in the media, or what was going on with our teammates.”
“I get emotional talking about them because that was a special four years in my career, coming off an Achilles [injury]. They helped me through a lot, so I don’t have anything [bad to say].”
Notably, Durant admitted that Kyrie Irving being traded to the Dallas Mavericks was a huge reason he decided to leave the “super team” he once tried to build. In fact, he went as far as saying that Irving leaving took away the team’s identity.
“I was upset that we couldn’t finish. I thought we had some good momentum. We were finally building a culture that we always wanted. I felt like every game we were building our chemistry, but I didn’t know what was going on with Kyrie and his situation with the organization, so I didn’t really focus on that,” Durant said.: “I only focused on what we were doing on the court, and it was a blow to our team. It just took away our identity. He was a huge, huge part to what we do. His game, he’s a Hall of Fame player, a great, great player, that can do everything on the floor and we relied on that.
“So without him we didn’t have a clear identity. So that was tough for me to stomach.”
Durant will now try to team up with Devin Booker and Chris Paul to bring the Suns their first-ever NBA title. Durant has two of his own, both won when he was a member of the Golden State Warriors.
