Both Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving spoke individually this weekend about their experience in Brooklyn and why they wanted to try their luck elsewhere in the NBA. In the case of the current Suns star, he personally requested a trade before the start of the 2022/23 season and waited until February of this year for the Nets to honor his request.

He recently discussed what he was thinking when he decided to leave fresh York for a fresh adventure.

“I tried. “They just wouldn’t let me go,” Durant explained. “I tried, but time was running out.” I wasn’t going to miss any games because of this. So, when the season arrived, I was like, whatever happens, happens, and I just get ready for the season. So everything fell into place exactly as it should.”

Let us revisit and provide some perspective. The veteran forward joined Brooklyn in the summer of 2019, although he missed the entire first season due to an achilles heel ailment. He then played 129 games for the Nets before being traded to Phoenix at the start of the season.

“Are you in Brooklyn?” “It was just a lack of consistency and continuity in who we were as a team,” Kevin said. “And when you want to win a championship, you’ve got to build an identity from Day 1, and it was just a lot of circumstances that were out of the players’ control that got in the way of us building our continuity.”

Despite playing alongside Irving and James Harden at one time during the Durant era, the Nets only won one postseason series. The Beard eventually requested a trade and was assigned to the 76ers, just as Kyrie did before being traded to Dallas.

“That’s just the business of basketball,” the former NBA MVP explained. “That’s just the NBA as a whole.” But we all improved as individuals, and we gained a lot from the experience — from executives to players — and we can now approach our NBA experience with more understanding.”