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For a moment there, it looked like the Golden State Warriors were going to reunite with Kevin Durant. There was a lot of bluster about a trade that would send Durant from the Phoenix Suns to the Warriors, but it was all for naught as KD didn't want to return. The Dubs turned their attention to Jimmy Butler and quickly got a trade and contract extension done.
It seems as if this really was up to Durant. If KD would have really desired a return to Golden State, it wouldn't be surprising if he was there and Butler was not. But, again, he didn't want to return, and The Athletic's Anthony Slater revealed that Stephen Curry learned this in a conversation with Durant earlier this week.
“At some point in the last several days, Stephen Curry had a conversation with Kevin Durant that convinced him a reunion was extremely unlikely, no matter how much the Golden State Warriors ownership group and front office collectively ‘underestimated' Durant’s coldness toward a return, as one team source put it,” Slater writes.
While the Warriors wanted to do everything they could to make the reunion happen with the two-time NBA champion and Finals MVP, Durant simply wasn't for it, giving the Suns the out to not pull off a trade. Even given his frustrations with the Suns, that's not the biggest surprise given how things ended with Golden State last time around. Durant was ripped to begin with for his move to the Warriors, and then there was drama with Draymond Green as time went on.
So a lot of this hype appeared to be wishful thinking on the Warriors' part. Still, they recovered quickly and were able to make the Butler trade despite some trepidation on the part of Curry and Steve Kerr. The trade and hefty extension for Butler are certainly a gamble, but it's one Golden State was desperate to make as the team floundered in mediocrity with Curry and Green in their twilight years.
