Kevin Durant became the latest superstar to ask out of his team, and Adam Silver shared his thoughts on the situation and why this is a bad look for the players and the NBA as a whole.
“No one has suggested to me that Kevin Durant has said he’s not willing to live up to the terms of his contract,” Silver said during a media session on Tuesday. “So to say you would like to play in another city is one thing.
To say I’m not going to appear for training camp or certainly games would potentially be a violation of his contract.”
Silver was called to comment on a repeating event that hurt NBA teams and players in different ways. The last few seasons the players’ names change — Anthony Davis, Kyrie Irving, James Harden, Ben Simmons —, but the point remains the same.
Players are testing the limits of the player empowerment era and the NBA teams are definitely going to demand a change in the next CBA. It came up again after Kevin Durant recently going public with his request to be traded from the Nets.
“Look, this needs to be a two-way street,” Silver said. “Teams provide enormous security and guarantees to players and the expectation is, in return, they will meet their end of the bargain.”
“I’m realistic that there’s always conversations that are going to go on behind closed doors. … But we don’t like to see players requesting trades, and we don’t like to see it playing out the way it is,” Silver noted.
Durant signed a four-year deal with the Nets last season, but he asked out of Brooklyn a few weeks back after the talks about a contract extension for his teammate Kyrie Irving fell apart.
The Nets lost a huge amount of assets to create the big three of Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and James Harden. Harden has already left in the February deadline, while Kyrie Irving will also get traded at some point, as he’s in the last year of his current deal.
Durant became the third star in a span of few months to request out of the organization.
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