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eight hundred gambler dot net in West Virginia. All right, welcome to Hoops Tonight, presented by FanDuel here at the volume. Happy Tuesday, everybody. I hope all of you are having a great week so far. Today is my thirty first birthday, and we're going to do one of my favorite things to do on my birthday today. We're gonna talk about
some basketball. Well we have some drama. Kevin Durant, according to Sham Surani of the Athletic, has provided an ultimatum to Nets owner Joe Sigh, either him or the general manager and the coach Steve Nash and Sean Marks. So some drama that will dive into. I just want to provide some context about where both of these sides are coming from and what I think is at stake here, and then what I expect to happen. You guys know the drill before we get started. Subscribe to the volumes
YouTube channels. Who don't miss any more of our video content. Follow me on Twitter at Underscore Jason Lts. You don't miss show announcements in any video content that I produce. And last but not least, if you miss any of these shows in any way, shape or form and you can't get over to YouTube, we do have a podcast feed wherever you find your podcast under Hoops Tonight, where you can find the audio version of these clips. All right, So what I'm gonna do to start here is read
a small excerpt from Sham's Urania's reports. You guys can see just the back store here in it face to face meeting with Brooklyn Nets owner Joe Sigh over the weekend. This is from the article All NBA star Kevin Durant reiterated his trade request and informed Sigh that he needs to choose between Durant or the pairing of general manager Sean Marks and coach Steve Nash. Sources tell The Athletic Durant stated he does not have faith in the team's direction,
sources said, end quote. So obviously, as it's always the case, there are two sides to every story. Katie has a little bit of a point. What happened against Boston, even despite the fact that Kadie struggled to dribble and shoot the basketball uncharacteristically, that Brooklyn Nets team scored more points per half court possession than anybody else who played that Boston team in that playoff run by a good margin.
They were about five and a half points better than even Golden State Fair, who was the second best team against Boston in that playoff run. They did not struggle to score the basketball. They got destroyed on the defensive end of the floor and in all of the effort and physicality areas of the game. What does that typically fall to the role players now There's obviously some blame there.
Kevin Durant obviously could have had a better defensive series, could have had a better series taking care of the basketball, handling, the physicality. Kevin Durant shares some blame for how that series went, a lot of blame. I think he'd be the first to tell you that, so does Kyrie Irving. But it's unrealistic to expect Kyrie Irving to be some menace in the role player areas of the game of basketball.
And with Kevin Durant with as big of an offensive role as he had on that team, it's unfair to expect him to go be Defensive Player of the Year and average fifteen rebounds a game. It's just it's just too much to ask. There is something to be said about the expectation on the front office to provide those surrounding pieces. There's it's a given to take there. Obviously Katie and Kyrie needed to be better, but they obviously didn't have the requisite horses to hang in that series.
So you're gonna, if you're Kevin Durant, you're gonna look at that and you're gonna think, hold on, we traded James Harden and I've got a guy over there in a suit who says that he's not mentally ready to play. Why didn't we factor that in when we made that trade. You're gonna look at Kessler Edwards and be like, he's not ready to play. But I know James Johnson could have played in this playoff series, and we let James Johnson go for the sake of giving Kes Ledwards a chance,
and he wasn't ready. You're gonna look at the front office there. In general, the approach of this new front office has been defined offensive minded, older veteran role players Blake Griffin, LaMarcus Aldridge, Paul Mills, sap Goran Dragics, Patty Mills. These are all players well on the down slope of their careers that even at their best, weren't great defensive players. Every one of these players is offensively minded, and Katie
and Kyrie got that covered. As we've talked about, they don't even rely on spacing all that much with their ability to shoot over the top of defenses when everything is collapsed around the rim. So the reality is is there is some stuff there with the front office that's legitimate criticism. The question becomes how much of a role.
Did Katie and Kyrie making a play in those decisions where Katie and Kyrie pushing for Blake Griffin and LaMarcus Aldridge and Paul millsap I don't know, probably to some extent, but it's the same classic dynamic that we saw with the Lakers Lebron James and Anthony Davis. Probably we're making a questions to the Lakers front office. But it is Rob Polinka's job as the team builder. It's his job to be so aware of what's happening in the NBA by watching so much film that he knows exactly what
works and what doesn't. And it's his job to be like, hey, Lebron, I know Russ is your buddy, and yeah, once upon a time that dude was a force to be reckoned with, but guess what, he's not that guy anymore. Here. I had our video group, a crew put together this for you to demonstrate. Here some metrics as well, this is not a good idea, And that was Seawan Mark's jobs.
Sean Mark's job as well. If Katie and Kyrie were suggesting players of that ilk, or if they weren't and he was suggesting them, then he shares that blame as well, that Brooklyn Nets team did not struggle to score the basketball. There issue was in the effort in physicality areas of the game, and that typically is going to fall on team construct action and typically is going to fall on
the general manager. So Katie does have a point. And with the Steve Nash thing, Uh, it's a difficult type of team to coach with the way that Kyrie and Katie are very isolation heavy and take a lot of off the dribble jump shots. You know. Goran Dragicz himself said in this offseason that it was a difficult offense to play it. And if Steve Nash gave them the freedom to do that, there's no guarantee that you're making
some coaching change. Is gonna what Katie and Kyrie are gonna change the way they're gonna play, You're gonna be playing in a similar system. Yeah, the defense wasn't great, but they didn't have the players to do it, regardless of who was at the helm. So the Steve Nash piece, I get confused by it, Like sometimes he looks like a like a passenger on that team. But I would say that's Katie and Kyrie's fault in a lot of ways,
so that the Steve Nash piece is weird. This is Joe sighs angle, though, because where Josiah has to look back at k D and apply some blame in that direction is the Kyrie partnership. Look, Katie and Kyrie are extremely close, so close in fact, that I believe Katie has a little bit of a blind spot for Kyrie, which is fine, we all do. We all have blind spots for the people that we love in our lives.
But Katie feels a certain way about Kyrie in the face of overwhelming evidence that the Kyrie thing comes with a lot of baggage. At least it did in this last couple of years. The partnership with Kyrie, which came hand in hand with the Kevin Durant partnership, hurt this team over the last couple of years. It put the drama over the basketball and the team suffered, and that was because of Katie's friendship with Kyrie. Some of that blame falls on k D. And again, Kadi puts basketball first.
You could not pick a better person to partner with as a franchise than Kevin freaking Durant. But if that partnership comes with Kyrie attached, and Kyrie behaves the way he did the last two years, then by you know, basically by the transitive property, we know that the partnership with Kadie has some baggage that comes along with that.
You know, it became very difficult for the team to build continuity, to build an identity, to build offensive structure, to get the players used to playing with each other. It's very difficult to do any of that when you've got a player that, on multiple occasions two years ago up and left the team without telling the coach for personal reasons, not because he was hurt, he was taking PTO during the damn season. And then obviously I don't
need to get into the vaccine situation this year. So from Joe seize angle or if I'm if I'm Sean Marks and I'm advocating for myself in a meeting with Josiah, I'd be like, look, man, they're the ones running the team in a lot of ways, at least to some extent, So how much blame can this can really be put on me? Here? And I see all sides of the story, because, like I laid out earlier, the moves. They've made a
lot of them I disagree with. But when you partner with Katie and Kyrie, there's a lot of baggage that comes with that. What's stake, what's at steak here is really interesting because this is the latest arena of the never ending conflict between NBA ownership and the top tier of NBA players and who's really in control here. And I would imagine that Josiah is gonna have a lot of NBA owners calling him and saying things like you get rid of him, don't capitulate to Kevin Durant's demands.
This is a bad look for all of us, and the ultimate decision falls in the hands of Josiah. But it's a legitimate concern if you allow a player, even if you think he's right, even if you even if you're Josiah and you truly believe in your heart of hearts that Kevin Durant is right about Sean Marks and Steve Nash, if you do this, it doesn't look good. It looks like you're a week owner who is capitulating
to the demands of a disgruntled star. That's the optics of it, regardless of the real power dynamics at play, and so Josiah has a decision to make. Is he gonna fight for some sort of core principle here or does he want to win? Because the truth of the matter is is if you keep Kevin Durant and you keep Kyrie Irving and some of the damn good acquisitions from Sean Marks this summer, getting Royce O'Neil, getting t J. Warren, if you if you bring everybody back, you're going to
win more. Ben Simmons could be playing this year, assuming he still likes to play basketball. Ben Simmons could be playing this year and you could have a really good team. If you trade Kevin Durant, you will not be as good this year. But that's where the principle comes in, because you can trade Katie and get a player at least the caliber of Jalen Brown a bunch of draft picks, Like, yeah, that's a good foundation to start with. You could trade
Ben Simmons and get something less but similar. I'd have Ben Simmons play some basketball this year. First, you can trade Kyrie Irving to the Lakers and get at least one first round draft pick, so you could rebuild around a new principle of team over player and try to construct a basketball first culture here. But you will suffer in the short term because you're giving up Kevin Durant near the peak of his powers. So it's a really
difficult decision. My expectation is that this ends in a trade. Still, I just have a hard time believing Josiah pulls the trigger on that. If I was running the team, I'd probably approach KD. What I would say is, look, man, I will do this. I will fire Steve Nash, I will fire Sean Marks, but you have to let me trade Kyrie Irving. That's what I would do because the Kevin Durant partnership, that's a great partnership. The Kevin Durant and Kyrie partnership, that comes with a lot of ups
and downs. One last note from the article at the end quote the Celtics Toronto Raptors in Miami heat remained the most significant candidates to require Durant, sources said, with Boston's package centering out all star forward Jalen Brown seen as a viable deal. Sy and the Nets have made clear privately that they will take every last asset from
a team that trades for Durant. Sources said Durant has grown close with Boston coach Email Udoka in recent years, after Udoka spent a year with Durant as an assistant in Brooklyn and later with Team USA for the Tokyo Olympics. End quote, interesting thing there is Toronto still in the mix. I think they're the team that makes the most sense. The Boston Celtics are still in the mix there. That's a deal that I think Boston should be doing everything they can to try to make um the Miami Heat.
I still don't know how they're even in the conversation. I don't know what pieces they're offering there that that really perk Brooklyn's attention. But the interesting thing there is two teams that I was high on early in this process. Toronto and Boston are still leading the pack there. And if and look, man if, if Kevin Durant is concerned about franchise direction and competency and wants to go to a place that's basketball for dude, You're gonna love it
in Boston. You're gonna love being under Brad Stevens. You're gonna love being under Email Udoka, and you're gonna be You're gonna love being with Jason Tatum and those guys. I think that's the best pace place for him. Well, more drama, it is what it is. Um. Like I said, I still think this ends into Kevin Durant trade, but I did want to take some time today to kind of dive into that dynamic between him in the front office. The volume