It isn’t day-after-day the NBA world will get a Recreation 7 of the Finals and a future Corridor of Famer altering groups through blockbuster commerce.
However simply hours earlier than the Oklahoma Metropolis Thunder and Phoenix Suns play for the 2025 title (8 p.m. ET, ABC), the Phoenix Suns and Houston Rockets linked as much as ship Kevin Durant to Houston in a deal for Jalen Inexperienced, Dillon Brooks, the No. 10 general choose in Wednesday’s draft and 5 second-rounders.
Which franchise received the commerce? How will Durant match inside the Rockets’ younger roster? Are the Suns going full rebuild? ESPN NBA insider Kevin Pelton grades the deal from each angle.
Houston Rockets: B+
There was an odd distinction during the last month as dialogue of Durant’s subsequent vacation spot heated up on the similar time the 2025 NBA playoffs had been reaching their conclusion. Youth and depth led the Pacers and Thunder to the NBA Finals, but groups had been competing to catch them by giving up a number of contributors to herald Durant, who will flip 37 across the begin of coaching camp.
Coming off ending second within the West with just one starter (guard Fred VanVleet) older than 28, the Rockets had been absolutely finest positioned to string the needle of surrounding Durant with sufficient expertise to contend for a championship — notably as the value dropped to the purpose the place they did not have to incorporate any of their most prized younger gamers in return.
The seven-game sequence Houston misplaced to the veteran-laden Golden State Warriors within the opening spherical uncovered the Rockets’ want for extra half-court scoring punch. The Rockets ranked twenty second in factors per play on their first try to attain outdoors of transition, per Cleansing the Glass, forward of solely the Orlando Magic amongst playoff groups.
Throughout the common season, Houston was in a position to compensate with frequent use of transition and by dominating the offensive glass. In response to Cleansing the Glass, no workforce averaged extra factors per missed shot on second probabilities. Each of these components are inclined to dry up within the playoffs, particularly late in shut video games. The Rockets went 0-3 in “clutch” video games in opposition to the Warriors, posting an unsightly 91 offensive ranking with the margin inside 5 factors within the final 5 minutes of these video games per NBA Superior Stats.
Though Durant is not as singular a scorer as in his prime, when he posted a real capturing share (TS%) a minimum of 15% higher than league common 9 occasions in keeping with Basketball-Reference, he is nonetheless pretty much as good as nearly anybody creating his personal offense. Amongst gamers with a utilization price of 28% or greater in a minimum of 500 minutes final season, solely Denver Nuggets three-time MVP huge man Nikola Jokic surpassed Durant’s .642 TS%.
The distinction with Inexperienced particularly favors Durant. Additionally a No. 2 choose, Inexperienced had Houston’s highest utilization price final season with a below-average .544 TS%. (All-Star middle Alperen Sengun, who had the workforce’s second-highest utilization, wasn’t any higher at .545 however makes extra performs for others and has scored extra effectively previously. Inexperienced’s TS% was a profession excessive.)
All of the Rockets’ younger stars confronted a troublesome adjustment to the playoffs, however none extra so than Inexperienced, who averaged 13.3 PPG on 37% capturing. His 38-point Recreation 2 was the one time Inexperienced surpassed 12 factors or shot higher than 40% within the sequence. Basically, Golden State condensed all of the fears about Inexperienced’s weaknesses as a number one scorer into one, salient seven-game pattern.
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The numbers behind KD’s commerce to the Rockets
With Kevin Durant heading to Houston, try some key statistics and details from his time with the Suns.
The larger loss for Houston within the brief time period will certainly be Brooks, whose arrival was key to the Rockets’ speedy evolution from 60-plus losses in each 2021-22 and 2022-23 to 52 wins final season. Together with VanVleet and coach Ime Udoka, Brooks helped rework Houston’s defensive tradition. And as a lot because the Rockets utilized depth to complete atop a crowded pack of West contenders throughout the common season, they’re instantly skinny on the perimeter.
Amen Thompson will undoubtedly be a key half to fixing no matter points this commerce creates. Thompson, who obtained my vote for Defensive Participant of the Yr, surpassed Brooks as Houston’s perimeter stopper final season. (Having two elite defenders was actually a luxurious, one which helped the Rockets defend each Stephen Curry and Jimmy Butler within the opening spherical.)
As a result of Thompson can defend on the perimeter at 6-foot-7, swapping two wings for the 6-foot-11 Durant basically strikes him from the Rockets’ energy ahead to their capturing guard with out essentially altering the construction of Houston’s offense.
Will probably be attention-grabbing to see the place Udoka settles on a fifth starter alongside Durant, Sengun, Thompson and VanVleet. Jabari Smith Jr. may transfer again into the beginning 5 after Thompson changed him within the lineup midseason, which might give the Rockets a frontcourt stuffed with gamers listed at 6-foot-11. Alternatively, Houston’s most like-for-like alternative for Brooks could be sixth man Tari Eason.
Selling a kind of gamers to the beginning 5 does put extra stress on current first-round picks Reed Sheppard and Cam Whitmore to step ahead. Sheppard, the No. 3 general choose, performed simply 654 minutes as a rookie, whereas Whitmore was on the fringes of Udoka’s rotation when everybody was wholesome. Whitmore has been productive when he is gotten alternatives and Sheppard was my top-rated prospect in final 12 months’s draft, so the Rockets’ entrance workplace is justified in believing each gamers are able to contributing extra.
Including Durant, and presumably signing him to an extension past 2025-26, will power tough monetary decisions for Houston. Having signed middle Steven Adams to a three-year, $39 million extension, the Rockets are already pushing the posh tax this season. In the event that they fill out their roster with gamers making the minimal, they’re about $33 million under the projected luxury-tax line earlier than addressing VanVleet. Houston holds a $44.9 million workforce choice for the veteran level guard however may decline it in favor of a long-term deal that pays him much less in 2025-26.
Paying a small quantity of luxurious tax this season would not have an effect on the Rockets a lot, however delaying the clock on the repeater tax may have large ramifications down the street. Houston will get way more costly as soon as Thompson’s rookie contract expires in 2027. The Rockets are absolutely penciling in a max deal for Thompson, whereas Eason and Smith are eligible for rookie extensions now. In the meantime, Durant’s wage may enhance on an extension as he heads into his late 30s.
These are issues for one more day. Houston has moved on to the subsequent part of a powerful roster construct with out giving up any of the workforce’s Most worthy draft picks. The Rockets retained Phoenix’s unprotected 2027 first-round choose, plus the chance to get the 2 better of picks from the Suns, Brooklyn Nets and Dallas Mavericks in 2029. Additionally they have a swap with the Nets in 2027 that places stress on Brooklyn’s rebuild to speed up.
Based mostly on their mixture of younger expertise and the dearth of a go-to scorer, Houston was at all times the perfect match as Durant’s subsequent workforce. Now we’ll see whether or not he can raise the Rockets to their first playoff sequence win since former Oklahoma Metropolis Thunder teammate James Harden was starring in Houston.
Phoenix Suns: B
This Durant commerce is unquestionably the start of a roster makeover reasonably than the completion of it. Phoenix obtained again a pair of wings, exacerbating the imbalance of a roster whose 5 highest-paid gamers (Bradley Beal, Devin Booker, Inexperienced, Brooks and Grayson Allen) may all be referred to as pure capturing guards.
Pending these future strikes, this Durant commerce appears pragmatic for the Suns, who by no means stood an opportunity of recouping the worth they gave as much as get him from the Nets on the 2023 commerce deadline. Durant is greater than two years older now and a 12 months away from free company, which means Phoenix had far much less management of negotiations. And after the workforce’s relationship with Durant frayed when the Suns mentioned buying and selling him in February, bringing him again wasn’t a practical risk.
The worst-case situation for Phoenix was buying and selling Durant for veterans who match higher alongside Beal and Booker in a misguided try and win now. Once more, let’s not rule out that taking place down the road, however for now the Suns obtained what might be the perfect 2025 draft choose to alter fingers and the 23-year-old Inexperienced.
I by no means preferred the three-year extension the Rockets gave Inexperienced, which each pays him like an above-average starter ($33.3 million in 2025-26) when he is not presently one and permits him to turn out to be an unrestricted free agent at age 25 in 2027 if he does get away. (That extension did serve its function for Houston, as structuring this deal as a sign-and-trade involving Inexperienced as a restricted free agent would virtually actually have been not possible.)
Nonetheless, it is actually attainable Inexperienced can faucet into his upside if he sticks round. He is by no means performed alongside a creator as gifted as Booker, and Inexperienced may get extra alternatives as a “second-side man” when the ball swings over to him after defenses have loaded as much as cease Booker.
Brooks would instantly turn out to be the Suns’ finest perimeter defender, and it is amusing to see him lastly land in Phoenix six-plus years after the miscommunication over which “Brooks” the Suns had been getting in a deal involving Trevor Ariza, lengthy since retired. If Phoenix goes to chop payroll to keep away from exceeding the second apron and having one other first-round choose frozen from trades, nevertheless, Brooks is a possible candidate given his worth all through the league.
In 5 years, the No. 10 choose will possible matter most to the Suns. They have not picked that prime since 2020, once they jumped from the lottery to the NBA Finals after taking Jalen Smith No. 10, two picks forward of Tyrese Haliburton. Phoenix, which has just one first-round choose on a rookie contract on the roster (Ryan Dunn), now holds a pair of first-rounders subsequent Thursday.
Buying Durant was clearly a failure for the Suns, who ended up profitable solely a single playoff sequence throughout his three seasons on the roster and nonetheless owe their 2027 and 2029 first-round picks to that commerce. Phoenix did not have practically sufficient leverage to get these picks again from the Rockets.
That alternative, plus the following Beal commerce that additional restricted the Suns’ flexibility and others that misplaced management of their first-rounders by 2031, is previously. All they’ll do now’s attempt to maintain making higher choices that incrementally brighten a dismal future outlook.
