ALWAYS SEARCHING, NEVER HAPPY: DURANT’S LEGACY IS DAMAGED

Three years to the day after leaving Golden State for Brooklyn, an all-time great is demanding a trade to his fourth team in six years, an annoying trail that hopefully leads him to … Sacramento

     Only last summer, he was Captain America, reminding the world of our basketball superiority at the Tokyo Olympics. Now, Kevin Durant is just another misguided American Capitalist, and a monumental flop at that. His legacy no longer is centered on his sublime scoring abilities and freakish physical gifts.

     Rather, he’ll be remembered as a recklessly impulsive gypsy, drifting from Oklahoma City to Golden State to Brooklyn to (fill in the next team) in his hunt for NBA titles, never happy even when he won two rings with the Warriors. At least his contemporary in peripatetic behavior, LeBron James, has cashed in on his wandering whims with four championships, winning in each pit stop. But Durant’s failure with the Nets is a reputation-buster, losing a gamble that Stephen Curry and the Warriors won last month, rediscovering their glory without him.

     It was Durant who took control of a desperate franchise that foolishly let him call the shots. His first blunder was creating a partnership with Kyrie Irving, akin to forming an alliance with skin cancer. His second blunder was signing off on unproven Steve Nash as head coach when he and Irving clearly didn’t take him seriously. His third blunder was urging management to acquire James Harden, who was creeped out by Irving’s self-absorbed, anti-vaccine existence and abruptly begged his way out of town. His fourth blunder was approving the acquisition of another head case, Ben Simmons, who never suited up. The result was an organizational debacle unlike any in recent sports history, if not ever.

    And make no mistake, this is Durant’s catastrophe. He thought he was smart enough, as an all-time talent and business mogul, to out-think the Warriors and the rest of the NBA. He only authored the ultimate book on why superteams — the collecting of superstars — no longer succeed. This feels like a watershed, the crash of the Nets coinciding with the affirmed dynasty in San Francisco, where homegrown players are developed within a culture that emphasizes championships over individuals. Durant thrived in that capsule, but in the final analysis, he needed the Warriors more than they needed him. As an individual, he doesn’t know how to win a title. The demise of the superteam is very real, as seen in 2021, when homegrown Giannis Antetokounmpo didn’t need to recruit marquee names to a small-market team, Milwaukee, for his first parade.

     So Durant is back on the street again, searching for something he’ll likely never find. After issuing a trade request directly to Nets owner Joe Tsai, who must feel like the biggest fool in New York, Durant immediately began searching for a new contender to glom onto. Fittingly, his demand came three years to the day after he’d demanded out of the Bay Area and landed with Irving east of the East River. All of which has amped up the string puppets on talk radio, who are proposing two, three- and four-way deals that have listeners drooling.

     Please stop. For those of us who still care about values in sports, zilch is exciting about the NBA’s never-ending trails of superstar disloyalty. The rampant get-me-out-of-here-ism is beyond the point of annoying, and don’t bore me with more poetry about 21st-century athlete empowerment. This is about spoiled entitlement, actually, and any team owner who enables it deserves the resulting shame and financial losses. Just as Durant and Irving failed to reach the Finals with the Nets, or even emerge from the first round this year, they set fire to Barclays Center and fled the flames.

     But the arsonists should swallow a dose of reality before they laugh their way to their next destinations: They don’t have the power anymore. Durant still has four years left on his contract, while Irving just opted in for one season. That allows Nets general manager Sean Marks to make deals as he so desires. Sure, Durant wants to be shipped to Phoenix, where he’d join Devin Booker and Chris Paul and seek revenge against the Warriors in the Western Conference. Conveniently, the Suns are trying to trade big man Deandre Ayton and might have a match if Mikal Bridges and massive draft assets are included. But what if Marks likes a better offer from, oh, the Sacramento Kings? Or more seriously, the Utah Jazz, who could offer disgruntled Donovan Mitchell? Durant would have to waste his twilight in obscurity, if not NBA hell. It’s a fate he deserves, when you think about it.

     Miami also is on his wish list. Tempting as it must be for Pat Riley, know this about the league’s godfather: He has been around much too long and won’t tear apart a formidable foundation to accommodate Durant. It was one thing to sign James and pair him with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh. A dozen years later, Jimmy Butler has no interest in ceding to a superstar. Nearing 34, coming off major injuries that have shortened his career span, Durant can’t just name his destination. Would he enjoy playing with Zion Williamson? Of course, but the New Orleans Pelicans won’t be tearing up their young nucleus, either. Same goes for Denver, where the first priority was rewarding two-time MVP Nikola Jokic with $270 million, the league’s largest-ever supermax contract.

     Nor is Durant helping his cause when longtime business manager Rich Kleiman — mismanager, I’d call him — leaks that he still wants to play with Irving. Having watched the chaos of the last three seasons, what owner or GM of sane mind would allow this tragic tandem to wreck a team? In that vein, Durant has become his own worst enemy. With every urge to acquire him, a team also must ponder the drawbacks. If a GM thinks twice about pulling the Durant trigger, there’s no chance of pulling an Irving trigger. It might require a multi-team deal to take them to their preferred destinations — such as, Durant to Phoenix for Ayton, Bridges and a load of No. 1 picks; and Irving to the Lakers, allowing Russell Westbrook to be shipped to San Antonio with the Lakers’ two remaining first-round picks this decade.

     Would the Suns, with Durant but minus two young difference-makers, be any more equipped to topple the Warriors? Don’t think so. Phoenix would loom as another superteam headed for disappointment, banking on the broken-down bodies of two legends. Somewhere, the original superteam instigator is watching closely, perhaps wondering if he should call Durant to see if there’s an eventual hookup somewhere.

     Even LeBron must be tiring of the endless, dizzying offseason activity that he birthed when he took his “talents to South Beach.” Yeah, I could live with Kevin Durant landing in Sacramento. He deserves a jail sentence after committing a sports felony: sabotaging a franchise, insulting fans who should stop buying his jersey, and doing severe damage to what once was a regal American name. His.

###

     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.