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If the Warriors were ever in the Kevin Durant sweepstakes, Golden State GM Bob Myers has seemingly taken them out of it.
In an interview with Mark Medina of NBA.com, Myers says he’s happy with his championship roster and isn’t planning any major changes.
“I like our team and where it’s at,” Myers told NBA.com. “I want to give the guys a chance to do it again.”
As Medina wrote Thursday that means no KD.
In other words, don’t expect the Warriors to reunite with Kevin Durant. Sure, they know first-hand how valuable Durant can be — he helped them win back-to-back titles in 2017 and 2018 — but after claiming another championship without him, the Warriors appear to be comfortable moving forward with what they have.
“We kept most of it together, but we have to stay healthy. I didn’t think we’d make it last year, but we did. I watch like you do. We’ll see what happens,” Myers told Medina during a break at the ESPYS in Los Angeles.
A week or so ago, Marc J. Spears of ESPN’s Andscape suggested the Warriors were the team to watch when speculating about a Durant trade, noting how they had all the pieces the Nets would need in return for KD and Durant knows the territory, literally and figuratively. Shams Charania listed Golden State as one of four teams who had a serious interest in Durant.
But the Warriors never seemed like a serious player in that the team had just won a title and any trade for Durant would gut the Warriors pool of long talent. There’s also been some discussion of whether the Warriors want to bring KD back. Steph Curry even joked about it at the ESPYS.
Steph had plenty of help when crafting his ESPYs monologue pic.twitter.com/AfO5StnC5O
— Warriors on NBCS (@NBCSWarriors) July 21, 2022
As Medina noted, “It does not appear the Warriors want to sacrifice any of their youth or depth in pursuit of another marquee player.”
“It’s a good group. We’re lucky. It’ll be fun to see,” Myers said. “We were really hunting last year. Now I guess we’re back to being the hunted, which I didn’t think we’d be. We’ll see. I think we can handle it.”
The Warriors did lose Gary Payton II to Portland, Otto Porter Jr. to Toronto and Damion Lee to Phoenix, but have added Dante DiVincenzo from Milwaukee and JaMychal Green for Oklahoma City and are expected to offer extensions to All-Star wing Andrew Wiggins, and on combo-guard Jordan Poole. Moreover, both Moses Moody and James Wiseman both played well in the Summer League. The Warriors still have to make a decision on Andre Iguodala.
“We kept most of it together, but we have to stay healthy,” Myers said. “I didn’t think we’d make it last year, but we did. I watch like you do. We’ll see what happens.”
The Golden State situation, in fact, is reflected across the NBA as Brian Windhorst reflected on ESPN.
“The truth is we truly have a one of a kind situation on the trade market. Durant’s price is so high that nobody can afford to pay it, because if you execute a trade that makes your team weaker, then the point of you even calling to acquire Kevin Durant is failed,” said Windhorst on ESPN.
“So here we have something that’s extremely valuable that nobody wants to buy at its price. So when that happens two things usually happen in the market, in the supply and demand world; one is the price either gets lowered, or two it comes off the market. So right now, what we have is everybody waiting for the price to get lowered as the Nets mull taking it off the market. As of right now, as I put my ear to the ground in the NBA, I’m not hearing anything changing as far as the demand phrase of this process.”
On Friday, Zach Lowe said even if the key young players were offered, that wouldn’t satisfy the Nets.
“That’s where you negotiate, though because you wouldn’t end up giving up all of those players,” Lowe said during a conversation with Warriors reporter Kendra Andrews during the latest episode of “The Lowe Post” podcast.
“That’s just too many players to give up if you’re giving up a lot of picks too. By the way, the Warriors, for a good team, they only owe one future first-round pick. They owe it to Memphis via the [Andre] Iguodala salary dump [in 2019], which feels like eons ago. They’re actually set up to … they have more flexibility. trade-wise, not financially. Financially, they are breaking all the barriers, but more flexibility trade-wise than most teams.
“That’s where you would negotiate. You would end up keeping a (Jonatahn) Kuminga or a (Moses) Moody. The issues are (Andrew) Wiggins and (Ben) Simmons. You run into the designated rookie fiasco. The intel I have is that the Nets are not super high on Wiggins or Poole as sort of centerpiece players. Then you get to the other guys who are relatively unproven in the NBA. So I don’t know if there ever really was a deal there that the Nets would have done. Obviously, you have to explore it if you’re the Warriors.”
- Golden State’s Bob Myers: ‘I want to give the guys a chance to do it again’ - Mark Medina - NBA.com
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