The NBA is stuck with trade requests.
Commissioner Adam Silver may not like it as he restated at the league’s summer owners’ meetings in Las Vegas this week.
“We don’t like to see players requesting trades, and we don’t like to see it playing out the way it is,” Silver said Tuesday when asked about star Kevin Durant requesting a trade from the Brooklyn Nets.
Durant is at the center of the NBA’s offseason drama since it was reported on the day free agency opened on June 30 that he wanted out of Brooklyn.
Trade requests aren’t unusual, and Silver knows this. He prefers they remain private between the team and the player and his agent. This is the NBA, though, where off-court theater often drives the discussion even as Silver says, “I don’t want to be naïve, but I would love the focus to be on the play on the floor.”
What makes Durant’s request unusual is the number of seasons left on his contract. Last offseason, Durant signed a four-year extension worth $194.2 million. He hadn’t even played one game into the extension and wanted out – after the Nets retooled their roster to accommodate Durant and Kyrie Irving in the summer of 2019 with hopes of contending for a title.
“This needs to be a two-way street,” Silver said. “Teams provide enormous security and guarantees to players, and the expectation is, in return, they will meet their end of the bargain.”
Of course, when Rudy Gobert signed his five-year extension with Utah, the Jazz trotted Gobert out to talk about how much he enjoyed the Jazz, Utah and Salt Lake City. It had become home for him and his family. Two seasons later and one year into his extension, the Jazz this month traded him to Minnesota.
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There is perhaps no more egregious example of this than when the Los Angeles Clippers made an elaborate presentation to Blake Griffin in 2017 – presenting him as the future of the franchise after signing him to a five-year, $173 million deal – only to trade him seven months later.
Just five months ago at All-Star Weekend in Cleveland, Silver said, “Of course, as the Commissioner of this league, we want our players to be happy.”
That is one busy two-way street with Silver in the middle on the dotted yellow line hoping not to get hit by oncoming traffic.
Player empowerment started before Silver took over from David Stern as commissioner but players have become more emboldened beyond just trying to create super teams.
The players, such as Durant and Ben Simmons, have taken that to a different level, asking out of deals so early into the contract. Regardless of individual circumstances, owners took notice of Simmons, who did not report to training camp and didn’t play a game for the Sixers last season before he was traded to Brooklyn for James Harden, who also coincidentally asked to be traded. The entire situation had a negative impact on Philadelphia’s season.
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The implications of asking out go beyond the team or player. When Anthony Davis requested a trade from New Orleans more than a season before his contract with the Pelicans expired, Dell Demps lost his job as GM when he didn’t trade Davis before the February trade deadline.
“When a player asks to be moved, it has a ripple effect on a lot of other players, on that player’s team and other teams,” Silver said.
Is there a solution? Silver said the league and the union will address the issue but he also said he is not armed with solutions. It has been suggested that a franchise could recoup some of the money owed to a player but several agents discarded that idea and the union unlikely would agree to a financial giveback.
There may not be a viable solution that eliminates trade requests or even trade requests with two more years left on a contract.
Plus, how big of a problem is this compared to the perception of a problem? When a player of Durant’s stature asks for a trade, it is significant and will alter the power structure across the league. But how many players are making trade requests annually? Not that many. It takes a big name, a player with leverage who can force such a deal, and a player who will return draft picks and/or quality players to the team trading him.
Players have done this for 50-plus years. Silver and the league may not like the current incarnation, but it is hard to envision a scenario in which trade requests aren’t part of the NBA landscape.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Kevin Durant, others can demand trades. NBA just has to deal with it.
