What are the Chances of Kevin Durant becoming a Celtic?
Yesterday, Sean Deveney of Sportingnews.com ranked the Celtics as the team with the eighth highest chance to land Kevin Durant when he becomes a free agent next offseason.
Before the Celtics, he lists the following teams: Thunder, Wizards, Warriors, Rockets, Heat, Mavericks and Clippers.
The Thunder will be able to offer Durant the most money – seeing as they have his bird rights, allowing their offer to exceed the salary cap. With the cap increasing next year from $67 million to an estimated $90 million (due to the impending television mega-deal), don’t be surprised to see Durant sign a contract that’ll pay him +$30 million/year.
However, the Thunder – since their inception in 2008 – have been notoriously frugal, exemplified by their willingness to trade James Harden in order to avoid exceeding the cap and incurring the luxury tax.
If Durant has grown disillusioned with OKC’s front office and their refusal to fully-commit to winning a championship – which usually requires teams to go over the cap – then he may leave in free agency.
While Durant has given no indication that he’d want to return to his hometown of Washington D.C., it hasn’t stopped people from speculating that Durant will join the Wizards in 2016. The prospect of joining John Wall and Bradley Beal has got to be somewhat alluring to Durant. If he decides to pull a LeBron James and return to his hometown, then Washington would quickly need to address it’s void at power forward, as Nene simply doesn’t get the job done anymore.
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After the Wizards, Deveney lists a few contenders who’ll likely have enough cap room to sign Durant next season. Between the Warriors, Heat and Rockets, the only team Durant has any real connection to would be the Houston Rockets, who have his old-teammate, James Harden.
While Harden and Durant ceased being teammates in 2012, the two have remained good friends. However, when Harden was on the Thunder, he was their third option, and actually came off the bench. Nowadays, Harden’s proven himself to be a worthy number one option.
So if Durant was to join the Rockets, there won’t be enough possessions to satiate each player’s desire to shoot. On the Thunder, people often criticize Russell Westbrook for stealing shots from Durant, yet, this problem would be just as prevalent on the Rockets – as Harden’s not ready to relegate himself into a secondary/tertiary option.
Meanwhile, I don’t quite see Dallas being able to woo Durant, as the 37-year-old Dirk Nowitzki‘s due for a significant drop off in production, making the Mavericks an even less attractive destination. Additionally, recent-signee, Wes Matthews is returning from an Achilles-injury, which historically, has been the hardest injury to recover from.
While Durant played college ball in Texas, and would enjoy the low taxes in Texas, if he was to join any Texas team, it’d be Houston (also, could the Spurs be a dark horse candidate- San Antonio’s the closest city to KD’s alma mater, UT… scary).
That brings us to the Celtics. Should we get our hopes up?
No. No. No. No.
Unless Boston wins 50+ games next season, he’s going to view the Celtics as a rebuilding team, and he’s not prepared to endure another rebuild. After his foot injury, which are often the most damning of injuries for bigger players, Durant has stared into the mortality of his career, and thus, will determine his destination on two factors: amount of guaranteed money and how prepared the team is to make a finals run.
Will that stop Danny Ainge from pursuing Durant? Definitely not. We’ll have enough space to sign two max players, so it wouldn’t hurt to at least send an offer sheet Durant’s way. If there is any remote chance of us landing Durant, it’ll unfortunately be because Durant – in the coming year – will either suffer a major injury, or fail to return to his MVP form. But where his stock’s currently at, the Celtics simply have no shot.
Although we fantasize about Brad Stevens and our city’s charm as being enough to lure free agents, I’m afraid it’ll take at least one other major free agent to land here first, before we can entice Durant to come to Boston.
Where we stand today, our best shot at acquiring a star is via-trade with our abundance of draft picks.