The Golden State Warriors have to at least think about making a home run swing.
They tried for years to win it all by hitting singles and doubles, re-signing their veteran stars while using their draft picks on young prospects. It was owner Joe Lacob’s patented “Two Timelines” plan, and while the Warriors still won the 2022 NBA Finals, the time has proven it inadequate to maintaining a dynasty.
What established that dynasty, however, was not playing it safe and trying to straddle the fence; it was bold, swing-for-the-fences moves that carried exceptional risk but also brought immense reward. Then it culminated in the biggest swing, signing MVP Kevin Durant to join a 73-win team and aim for the stars.
Durant and Stephen Curry then led the team to three-straight NBA Finals, winning the first two and being robbed of a shot at the third because Durant and Klay Thompson were felled by injury. Then, in a flash, Durant was gone, fleeing for a chance at establishing his success outside of Curry’s aura.
Fast forward a half-decade and Durant has failed to even reach the Conference Finals in Brooklyn or Phoenix. He finds himself at a crossroads this summer, on a Suns team with essentially zero assets to improve the team after a first-round sweep. The Warriors are likewise at a crossroads, not even making the playoffs this season and facing some difficult decisions about how to move forward.
What if the answer for the Warriors was the same answer for what Durant should do? What if it’s time for another home run swing, and that swing is once again named Kevin Durant? Let’s dig into a wild 3-team trade that would bring Durant back to The Bay and inject real championship equity into the final days of the Steph Curry dynasty.
Laying out a Kevin Durant trade
Trading for Kevin Durant will not be an easy task, as the Golden State Warriors have to shed enough salary to get under the luxury tax apron. If they don’t, they cannot stack (or aggregate) multiple-player contracts to trade for Durant’s. That would mean to add Durant they would have to send out Stephen Curry, and that obviously isn’t happening.
That difficulty was recently taken on by Bleacher Report’s Andy Bailey, who built a blockbuster 3-team trade to illustrate what it would take to bring Kevin Durant to the Warriors. If the Warriors were to jettison salary outside of the trade it’s possible to build a deal directly between the two teams, but adding a third team with cap space allows the Warriors to decrease their salary in the trade itself.
That also means the cost to not only add an All-NBA player and Top-20 player of all time is high, but it gets higher when you add a third team. Would the Warriors be comfortable paying that cost? Let’s look at the specifics and analyze the deal from all angles.
Do the Warriors accept this trade?
Two primary questions have to be answered for the Warriors to say yes to this deal. The first is whether they want to go all-in for a championship over the next couple of seasons.
While it seems like the answer should be “yes” that’s not how the Warriors have operated. They held onto their lottery picks and used them, and haven’t traded Jonathan Kuminga or Moses Moody despite ostensibly trying to maximize Stephen Curry’s prime. They held onto James Wiseman instead of moving him, either as the No. 2 pick or as a newly drafted high-value center.
The Warriors could decide to continue developing Kuminga, Moody, and Brandin Podziemski, let them continue taking the mantle from the old guard, and let Curry and company fade into the sunset as a new, younger core takes over. They could also straddle the fence, perhaps moving Moody and Andrew Wiggins in a deal for a different kind of starter.
This deal, however, means they are going all-in for the present. Kevin Durant is 35 years old, Stephen Curry is 36, and the Warriors would give up multiple draft picks and both Kuminga and Podziemski in this deal. They would be making a bet that the best option is to prioritize another title run with Curry, with the consequences past that point a fair price to be paid.
The second question that must be answered is whether Kevin Durant is the right player to push in the chips for. Should they try to trade for a younger star instead? What about one with less organizational baggage?
Just as he was eight years ago, Durant is a perfect fit with this team’s core. His shooting and length pair so well with Draymond Green in the frontcourt, it’s like the two were designed in a lab to complement one another. Even if each has lost a few miles off their fastball, the offensive combo of Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant stretches defenses to their max. Nothing about Durant’s game suggests he will suddenly drop off a cliff; that could happen, as it could for Curry, but they should each have another couple of star-level seasons in them.
If Curry, Draymond, and Durant can come together and make peace, and are all three committed to making a final run, the upside is a championship. Klay Thompson would almost certainly be back, and they would have Moses Moody and Trayce Jackson-Davis as the starting point for the rest of the rotation.
It’s an extremely expensive trade, but it’s also one of the only ones in the realms of reality that gives them a real shot at a title. That might make it worth pulling the trigger.
