Love, hate, risk, reward and Durant

Kevin Durant brings a lot of offense. He takes a lot, too.

He can drill a 28-footer in a Holland Tunnel traffic jam. He can hear an insult from bridges away. He is a 2-time NBA champion, an MVP, a 3-time Olympic gold medalist, a five-time leader in free throws and the best post-op Achilles patient in NBA history. Yet he gets dragged into the cyber-mud to argue with Stephen A. Smith, Michael Rappoport, and others who should probably have to pay a fee to share a server with him.

He feels unloved. Perhaps he should. After he basically launched the Oklahoma City Thunder, he was called “Mr. Unreliable” in a local headline, following a playoff loss. When he’s healthy, Durant might be the most reliable player in the NBA. But when he bolted the Thunder to join Golden State and pick up two NBA championships — while earning two Finals MVP awards — he was derided as a cherry-picker, a free rider.

Charles Barkley still says Durant needs to win a championship as “the bus driver,” a strange demand considering that a title team needs at least one co-pilot. Of course, Durant had already ghosted Barkley as well, giving out sullen one-word answers to Barkley’s questions last fall, and that wasn’t very strategic either.  Nobody has a bigger megaphone than the “Inside The NBA” crew, or a longer memory.

Now Durant, who turns 34 on Sept. 29, has asked the Brooklyn Nets to trade him. He played 90 games for the Nets in his two seasons, losing to Milwaukee in the Eastern semifinals and then getting skunked by Boston in last season’s first round. Durant averaged 29.9 points in 2021-22,  with a career-high 6.4 assists per game. His 37.2 minute average was his best since 2014.

The Nets have Durant signed up for four more seasons and Jerry West, among others, doesn’t think they will trade him. But if they don’t, and if they deal Kyrie Irving, Durant faces a dreary winter of intensified defense with Ben Simmons as the alleged second option. The only way Durant will be unanimously considered the equal of LeBron James, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Steph Curry is if he indeed drives a club into Victory Lane. If he stays with the Nets and finds himself struggling to get into the play-in tournament, the dark cloud over his head will morph into a cumulonimbus.

So the trade offers are lining up like ships in the Long Beach harbor. The team that gets Durant will win the July version of the NBA championship, no parade required.

That team will also have to donate its foreseeable draft picks to the Nets, the way the Lakers did to New Orleans when they picked up Anthony Davis. Is it worth winning one NBA title to live in a wasteland for the next decade? We’ll have to check with Rams’ general manager Les (“F them picks”) Snead for a dissenting opinion.

For instance, what do you do if you’re Boston, a place Durant strongly considered before he went to Golden State? The Celtics got to Game 6 of the Finals last year and have already brought in Malcolm Brogdon, a stabilizer and playmaker.

The Celtics also have something rare, a championship caliber nucleus that is both young and familiar. Jayson Tatum is 24, Jaylen Brown turns 26 in October and Marcus Smart is 28. They’ve been together for five years. Do you perform nuclear fission to pick up a middle-aged diva? It would be odd to separate Tatum from Brown, just as they’ve learned to play nice with each other.

The Nets would presumably get Brown, plus Grant Williams and Derrick White and two first-round picks from Boston, along with a swap of picks. If they also want Smart, that draft haul probably disappears. For Boston, the risk-reward equation is unbalanced. It would be trading a chance for long-term Eastern dominance for a short-term sugar high.

Phoenix is the other logical candidate, and the sheer critical mass of this proposed trade might be too much to resist for the 2021 Western champs.

The Nets would ask for Jae Crowder, Mikal Bridges and Cam Johnson, key supporting players, and four first-round picks or swaps. If that’s the offer, the Suns would trot out a lineup of Durant, Devin Booker, Chris Paul, DeAndre Ayton and who cares? Phil Mickelson will be available most weekends.

In each of the past two seasons, Paul has faltered in the playoffs, and last year Ayton was mysteriously AWOL in the Western semifinal loss to Dallas. The Suns have signed Ayton since Indiana gave him an offer sheet, and he only turned 24 last week. Are they patient enough to resist a Durant deal, especially if the Nets ask for Ayton?

There are other candidates. Toronto could make the deal if it offered Rookie of the Year Scottie Barnes in the package, but is disinclined so far. New Orleans could get involved by offering Brandon Ingram, the only NBA player who makes Durant look buffed-up, and then parlay Durant, Zion Williamson and C.J. McCollum into contention. But Ingram is a 24-year-old who is improving by gallops, and the Pelicans were a force after they traded for McCollum. Again, they will get better as each page of the calendar turns.

In Memphis they’re talking about emptying the room to get Durant. That scenario would send Jaren Jackson, Dillon Brooks, Ziaire Williams, rookie Jake LaRavia and five first-rounders so that Durant could play with Ja Morant. That could be pretty vibrant, with Desmond Bane, Tyus Jones and Steven Adams among the holdovers.

Golden State probably isn’t in this particular mix, which should lower NBA hypertension levels. With Andrew Wiggins and Jordan Poole becoming proven champions, the Warriors say they aren’t anxious to trade ambitious youth like Jonathan Kuminga and the newly healthy James Wiseman.

And if there’s a Hall of Famer on the prowl, Miami’s Pat Riley is surely stalking him. Again, the Heat doesn’t appear deep enough to give Durant what he needs if they make that deal. Once you get rid of Bam Adebayo, Kyle Lowry, Tyler Herro and Duncan Robinson, there isn’t much left except Jimmy Butler, who is 32 and needs the ball as desperately as Durant.

So there’s enough churn and speculation to make it another irritating NBA summer, and the exasperation will center on Durant. Is he worth it? Well, since he walked into the league as the No. 2 overall pick (behind Greg Oden) in 2007, he has been on the top of every chalkboard on every opposing locker room in every game he’s ever played. He will be playing on Christmas Day. He will be an All-Star. And people who didn’t have room to shoot before he joined the tea will have it now.

So just because Durant is stealing another one of our summers, don’t be a hater. Besides, he thinks you already are.