In the spirit of Sam Presti turning the Rashard Lewis trade exception into Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jalen Williams, let’s zoom out. This past Thursday was the four-year anniversary of Kevin Durant’s toe-on-the-line 2 at Barclays Center. That shot, in Game 7 of the Brooklyn Nets’ second-round series against the Milwaukee Bucks, is the best — or at least most literal — example of the razor-thin margin between winning and losing in recent NBA history.
Durant, then 32 years old, was widely considered the best player on the planet. He scored 48 points in 53 minutes in that game, four days after a 49-point, 17-rebound, 10-assist masterpiece.
At the time, the Phoenix Suns were in the middle of an NBA Finals run, led by Chris Paul and Devin Booker and a strong, young supporting cast. The Houston Rockets, having traded James Harden to the Nets, were in the beginning of a rebuild. A month after Brooklyn’s season ended at the hand of the Milwaukee Bucks, Phoenix’s did, too. Nine days later, Houston drafted Jalen Green with the No. 2 overall pick.
We all know that things change quickly in the NBA. Imagine, though, explaining Sunday’s blockbuster trade to someone who had been asleep in the mountains, Rip Van Winkle-style, for the last four years. Even if you skip the strange, sad demise of the Nets, the chain of events that led to this deal is hard to comprehend. In effect, the Suns and Rockets have switched places.
For Houston, the Durant acquisition is a lot like Phoenix’s acquisition of Paul before the 2020-21 season: It both vindicates and builds on what the Rockets have done for the past couple of seasons. For the Suns, the trade represents the exact opposite of all that. It’s a pivot, and it’s an admission that the many moves they made since the 2021 Finals have failed.
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In a vacuum, it’s not that difficult to understand why Phoenix traded Durant for Green, Dillon Brooks, the No. 10 pick in this year’s draft and five second-round picks. Durant is still an All-NBA-caliber player, but he is about to turn 37 and will be on a $54.7 million expiring contract next season if he doesn’t sign an extension. Yes, it looks bad that the Suns didn’t get their own 2027 or 2029 pick back from Houston (or get any of the Rockets’ young players aside from Green), but, given how the collective bargaining agreement has forced teams to manage their payrolls, I didn’t expect them get a better deal than this. According to ESPN’s Shams Charania, the Miami Heat refused to include 21-year-old center Kel’El Ware in their offers and Houston never put 20-year-old guard Reed Sheppard or 22-year-old big man Jabari Smith Jr. on the table.
The wider your lens, though, the worse this outcome appears to be. On Mat Ishbia’s first official day as team owner in 2023, Phoenix traded Mikal Bridges, Cameron Johnson, Jae Crowder, four first-round picks and one pick swap for Durant (and T.J. Warren). After losing to the eventual-champion Denver Nuggets in the second round of the playoffs, the team then fired coach Monty Williams, replaced him with Frank Vogel and traded Paul, Landry Shamet, five future second-round picks and four pick swaps for Bradley Beal (and his no-trade clause), Jordan Goodwin and Isaiah Todd. Separately, the Suns traded Deandre Ayton, whom they had selected No. 1 overall in 2018, for Jusuf Nurkic, Grayson Allen, Nassir Little and Keon Johnson. Toumani Camara, Phoenix’s No. 52 draft pick that year, also went to Portland in the deal.
Every part of this aged poorly. The Suns’ decision to “explode right through” the second apron, as ESPN’s Brian Windhorst put it, rested on the idea that they had constructed a superteam that could compete for a championship immediately. After the Minnesota Timberwolves swept them in the first round of the 2024 playoffs, they fired Vogel, hired Mike Budenholzer, used the stretch provision on Little’s contract and, eventually, dumped Nurkic’s contract. They finished this season 36-46 and seemingly miserable, which prompted them to fire Budenholzer.
Beal, Allen and the return from the Durant-to-Houston deal are all that’s left from the deals that sent away Booker’s five best teammates from the 2021 Finals team. Paul, who turned 40 last month, arguably had a more productive 2024-25 season than Beal, who turns 32 next week, did. Camara made the All-Defensive Second Team.
“I think the most frustrating part is being that close a few years ago, and now, back to where we are,” Booker told reporters in April.
New general manager Brian Gregory, who recently replaced James Jones, has inherited a mess, but hey, at least he’s aligned with Ishbia. And it remains unclear what, exactly, new coach Jordan Ott is walking into. Much like two years ago, the roster is without a point guard and thin at center, but now there’s an even bigger logjam on the wing and, instead of Durant playing the 4, Phoenix has Brooks. For now, the Suns are retooling around Booker rather than rebuilding from scratch. This will be tough, but, regardless of how the rest of the offseason goes, there will be much lower expectations, so it’ll probably be less of a bummer than the end of Durant’s tenure. (They have to trade either Booker or Green eventually, though, don’t they?)
The trade simultaneously reinforces how badly the first two and a half years of the Ishbia era went in Phoenix and how well the first two years of the Ime Udoka era went in Houston. In the summer of 2023, after going 22-60, the Rockets hired Udoka and added the tough, two-way veterans that Stephen Silas never had: Brooks and Fred VanVleet. In the moment, their contracts (three years, $128.5 million with a team option on Year 3 for VanVleet; four years, $86 million for Brooks) got mixed reviews, but the franchise’s vision became clear quickly: Houston’s defense jumped from No. 29 to No. 10, and it went 41-41, narrowly missing the postseason after an 11-game winning streak in March.
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In 2024-25, the Rockets’ defense improved to No. 5. They went 52-30 and finished seventh in point differential. They couldn’t score enough to survive their seven-game series against the Golden State Warriors, but they did enough damage that trading for Durant makes sense. In this defensive infrastructure, Durant will not be asked to cover up for a zillion mistakes the way that he was in Phoenix. On offense, he will relieve the pressure on VanVleet and benefit from Houston’s transition game. Ideally, his mere presence will help the Rockets’ young players, and they’ll enter next year’s playoffs more balanced and more dangerous.
Houston needed Brooks to thrive on that contract to pull this deal off, and he did. And regardless of your thoughts on Green, one of the league’s most polarizing players, the trade also justifies having signed him to an unconventional rookie extension last October. That deal will pay him $33.3 million next season and $36 million in 2026-27, and then Green will have a $36 million player option in 2027-28. By signing him to a contract that short, the Rockets did not project confidence in Green, the No. 2 pick in the 2021 draft, developing into a star. In the end, though, this was a manageable contract for the Suns to absorb.
In retrospect, Houston’s decision to draft Green over Evan Mobley (and Scottie Barnes and Franz Wagner) does not look brilliant. The Rockets found Alperen Sengun and Tari Eason in the middle of the first round, though, and, with budding star Amen Thompson, VanVleet and Sheppard on the roster, they no longer needed Green to put it all together. It’s generally not a great idea to trade a 23-year-old for an aging legend, but, in this particular situation, why not?
Sure, there is a chance that it will look like Houston has “lost” this trade years from now. Maybe Durant will be unable to stay on the floor, maybe Phoenix will find a star in Green or the No. 10 pick. This particular aging star fits well enough with this Rockets team, though, that the downside is more than acceptable. Unlike Durant’s previous situation, there is real upside here.
