NBA: 5 ripple effects of Kevin Durant’s Achilles injury
By Shea Norling
2. How Kevin Durant’s injury impacts the league
The Brooklyn Nets recently made a trade with the Atlanta Hawks that drastically shifted the perceptions of just how the NBA’s chaotic summer might play out. The Nets sent Allen Crabbe and his $37 million dead cap to the Hawks along with two first round picks for Taurean Prince and a 2021 second round pick. Effectively, the Nets shed money and created an opportunity to offer max deals to D’Angelo Russell and Kyrie Irving, who they’ve been linked to heavily over the past week.
The Nets also created an opportunity to let D-Lo leave, sign Irving, and allow him to bring a friend. The friend, of course, would be Kevin Durant. The two biggest free agent storylines of the season revolved around Irving and Durant, who were often linked together as a part of a package deal to the New York Knicks. After the Brooklyn trade, the location shifted, with many wondering if the Nets had done enough to woo Durant and Irving into creating their duo just outside of Manhattan.
With Durant likely to miss most of next season with his Achilles injury, the entire landscape has shifted. It may now behoove Kyrie to forgo signing a long-term deal this summer and instead sign a one-year contract with a second-year player option with the Boston Celtics — the same deal LeBron James would sign in Cleveland so often.
Should Klay Thompson vacate the Bay in favor of a payday (assuming KD opts in), Jimmy Butler‘s odds of staying with the Philadelphia 76ers also seem to increase. While the Lakers, Celtics and Sixers all seem to have gotten the best out of a bad situation, the Knicks feel like the team that has lost the most. After missing out on the top overall pick and Zion Williamson in this year’s draft, they now also have to ponder whether or not to offer Durant a max deal. They probably still would, but it comes with a great deal of risk now for a 31-year-old coming off a devastating injury.
The free agency market has become even more chaotic than it was expected to be only days ago, and could facilitate a super-team in Boston after all. Should Kyrie opt for a 1+1 contract, the Celtics will presumably go all-in for Anthony Davis. Should Gordon Hayward be a part of the trade as a cap casualty, the Celtics would have an opportunity to assemble an Irving, Durant, Davis super-team in the summer of 2020.