Media Reacts to Kevin Durant’s Trade Request From the Brooklyn Nets

It seems Kevin Durant has had enough of the circus that has been the Brooklyn Nets organization over the last two years. The former MVP and superstar officially requested a trade this afternoon in a stunning move that is, in many ways, truly without precedent.

A perennial MVP candidate like Durant rarely asks for a trade, and never asks right after signing a four-year contract extension that doesn’t include a no-trade clause. If Durant wants out no matter what, as the request seems to indicate, then he has no say over where he’ll end up next. The Nets are empowered to take the best package no matter who offers it.

The trade request has rocked the NBA world. Here are some of the immediate reactions from the sports media world.

Dan Graziano was joined by Brian Windhorst and Tim Bontemps for the first ESPN reaction to the KD trade during the airing of This Just In, normally hosted by Max Kellerman. I bet he’s unhappy he was off today. Anyway, Windhorst dominated most of the segment with his insider info, saying Brooklyn would honor KD’s trade request and very likely end up trading Kyrie Irving, too. The crew at large were in awe of the size of this moment.

Fortunately for all the main sports companies, everything was all set up for full-time basketball coverage today anyway because free agency begins tonight. So it was no hassle at all to get Adrian Wojnarowski onto NBA Today with Malika Andrews and let him cook. Woj provided more intimate details in regards to how the trade request went down and said there was a sense of “inevitability” and that everybody expected this day to come.

The crew of Speak For Yourself had the Fox Sports stage when the news broke. Marcellus Wiley observed that a good player is using his leverage to compete for championships. Emmanuel Acho said he’s looking “real Halle Berry-ish” which apparently means that KD looks good from a distance but any long-term relationship isn’t going to work out. Apparently like Halle Berry. It felt like Acho was steering real close to danger but kept himself out of serious trouble.

Wright had a multi-tweet reaction to the news that started with retweeting a First Things First segment from last week in which he urged Durant to return to the Oklahoma City Thunder and ended with comparing the state of affairs of all the teams who created superteams in the summer of 2019 — the Lakers, the Clippers, and the Nets.

Here’s Bill Simmons’ list of the most fun possible outcomes from this.