Kevin Durant: The Business Athlete
Stretch Four NBA: Volume 2
Happy Saturday,
I have completed 193 workouts, burned 98,905 calories, and worked out for over 9,515 minutes. It is a life-changing app for me and one cool feature is that while my personal trainer Alex is on maternity leave I have a substitute trainer Sarah who has kept me in stride this week coming off my Fourth of July travel week. The app gives me one on one training, feedback, and recommendations and Sarah is usually the first person who reaches out to me in the morning to let me know what’s on tap at the gym. I also like that it tracks my workouts outside of the app like I played basketball this morning and it logged my 950 calories. I am able to get the workouts in on my time and share videos, ask questions, and get feedback from my trainer. I can also set goals for myself. I am all in on losing the 10-15 pounds I have gained since becoming a dad so my workouts focus on weights and cardio.
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Hi All,
There have been tons of player movement since our last edition. I will spare you a breakdown of each major move and team but what I want to talk about this week is how rising player salaries and contract extensions can exist with seemingly zero commitment from the upper echelon of players while near-zero commitment of loyalty is shown to players down the market. I would like to frame my thinking around two players one being Kevin Durant and the other being Gary Payton II.
Also this week, I get the chance to spend 36 hours in Las Vegas at NBA Summer League. I plan to catch games, rub shoulders with some folks and get an on-the-ground feel for what is the biggest two weeks in the NBA off-season.
Let’s dive in.
Kevin Durant & The Brooklyn Nets
Ahead of the Fourth of July Weekend, Woj dropped the bomb heard around the world. Kevin Durant via his manager and agent Rich Klieman made a request to be traded from the Brooklyn Nets directly to Nets billionaire owner Joe Tsai. In the first edition of this newsletter, I referenced KD on his own podcast, and I felt that his energy when speaking about his future in Brooklyn was quite lethargic and off. Well, the request for trade was not in the cards but it happened. To put it into context, KD signed a four-year maximum extension last year worth $198 million that has not even kicked in yet.
Quote from Shlomo Sprung, writing for Boardroom in 2021
“Two years after joining the Brooklyn Nets, 11-time NBA All-Star forward Kevin Durant has agreed to sign a four-year contract extension with the team worth $198 million on Friday, Durant’s longtime manager Rich Kleiman confirms.
Following the 2020-21 season, Durant had received $306,172,746 in total career earnings from his NBA contracts, which ranks No. 5 on the all-time list. The 32-year-old’s new deal in Brooklyn will take him above half a billion dollars earned on the court.”
Contractually committing to the long-term success of the Brooklyn Nets and helping build a successful championship team was what this signing signaled. While any owner would have signed KD to this deal it showed a strong commitment from Brooklyn by locking up KD for four years at these numbers:
2021-22 - $42.0 million
2022-23 - $44.1 million
2023-24 - $47.6 million
2024-25 - $51.2 million
2025-26 - $54.7 million
Joe Tsai has been quite collaborative with Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving since they signed on in 2019. He signed DeAndre Jordan as a sort of commission for him helping lure KD along with Kyrie to the Nets, he let go of Kenny Atkinson in favor of a coach with no experience in Steve Nash whom KD allegedly had a preference for. He endured Kyrie Irving refusing to take a COVID-19 vaccine which limited his availability all of last season.
These commitments and sacrifices have yielded the Brooklyn Nets at best a second-round seven-game series exit to the eventual champions in 2021 and nothing more besides a sweep at the hands of the Boston Celtics this year. Yes, ticket sales have risen with the arrival of KD, but the Net’s payroll was only lower than the Warriors in 2021 and 2022.
With KD’s request, I think we have reached the end of an era in the NBA. That end involves franchises betting the house on singular superstars. While players will continue to be compensated at increasing rates I think teams will move away from allowing them to have input on personnel, coaching, and front-office decisions. While I think teams may put certain people in positions to lure players I do not think they will give players as much input once they have signed. This may have already started happening and may be the reason KD is demanding a trade, but I do not think it is the only reason.
My theory is that KD is heading into year 16 and he does not see Brooklyn as a competitive team in the current NBA. We all saw the teams that made it to the finals not even a month ago and it's clear that a strong defense is essential to winning an NBA championship. Brooklyn was a middle-of-the-pack team defensively, and with their payroll, they cannot get better there in the offseason. The best business decision KD can make to extend his career is minimizing an extreme regular season load on both offensive and defensive, cutting ties with Kyrie Irving as a teammate, and joining a team that has an established core, culture, and coach. The second part is key as from all we know KD no longer wants to play alongside his chosen sidekick and business partner Kyrie Irving. With KD being a basketball purest I think he has come to the end of the road with Kyrie who has not been a consistent player since his Cleveland days. While their off-the-court relationship may remain strong I believe the two are polar opposites when it comes to competitive basketball spirit and agendas. Lastly, KD had to be a bit disgruntled by the Warrior’s unsuspected return to NBA dominance by winning their fourth title in eight years and second without his services. While KD was the Finals MVP in two of his three finals trips with the Warriors there was so much drama in the final two years in Golden State I believe he saw Brooklyn as the future evolution of a super team and his best business move. Seeing the Warriors return to prominence had to hurt his competitive spirit and I think it is interesting to see his two top choice destinations being the Phoenix Suns and the Miami Heat. Both of these teams with KD have a great chance to compete with the Warriors for the 2023 NBA title.
The last implication here is that KD also sees the increasing salaries that players will receive in the coming years. With a new TV deal in the works that is rumored to be near $80 billion, it is not a stretch that in four years KD at 37 could be up for another maximum contract that can pay him upwards of $75-100 million a year. He has to be thinking about that and being able to capitalize on his basketball career. Despite his success off the court in startup investing, endorsements, and his own media outlet those numbers are hard to compare in your late thirties.
Next week I will take a look at the other side of this spectrum. As I will focus on two Warriors players who are undervalued and show how the drop-off in salaries hurts teams and players when it comes to competing for championships.
I am looking forward to Vegas this week and will likely post some insights later this week on my time there.