Former Player Says Kevin Durant Hates Key Rockets Teammate

100% this here.

 

Oh look, the poster who rarely has anything but horribly stupid takes, posts a horribly stupid take.

What a shocker.

 

Doesn't surprise me one bit. Snakes gonna snake. KD and Jabari give that same vibe.

 

Not necessarily language but there might be some cultural differences.

Alpi grew up in a culture where older players are highly respected and treated as superiors even if they are bad players. But older players are also expected to act as role models and mentors.

Clearly Alpi has that type of relationship with FVV.

Now it would be only natural for Alpi to be especially respectful to KD, considering that he is an all-time legend. But as we know KD has the maturity of a 19 year old despite being nearly 40. So the traditional hierarchical relationship is not going to work there.

I don't think that they need to be super duper friends as long as they have on court chemistry. But that's also not the case, so yeah not really surprising that they don't like each other.

 

Damn, now I know why you call yourself sniper.

 

Exactly, the amount of excusing KD is funny, ironic given how he's been talked about here in particular during the Warriors days.

Maybe Stone is playing chest and did this trade, because he needed an excuse to trade Sengun.

 

It doesn't have to do with coaching....DAFAAAAQ

 

Giannis is very good at basketball- so I am sure Durant would get along with him. FWIW Giannis is supposed to be a weird guy like Westbrook. So who knows.

 

It’s incredible how much of management is risk mitigation. The people management and PR sides aside (which I don’t think they are good at either), rest is all risk mitigation - the managers who stand above the rest are those who can identify the biggest potential pitfalls, and takes precautions to navigate their team around them. The complete lack of that is what’s scary about the Rockets future to me:

- They banked on older players in Fred, an injury riddled Stevo, and a 37-year old KD who missed a good chunk of games every season lately as critical pieces and almost each single points of failure on a contending run - and refused to get backups despite openly admitting this themselves. So either overly optimistic thinking or they just got caught with their pants down and had to spin it.

- They expected young guys to take major leaps, while scaling that leap to wildly different roles and super high playing time. We are killing KD, Sengun and Amen, and this almost never happens in a single off-season anyway. You can’t pressure Sengun to score more at a higher efficiency when no one can get him the ball at the low post so he has to start posting up from the perimeter. You can’t have Amen initiate your offense when he’s not done that before, and doesn’t have the requisite shooting or handles to give him any options when you know the defense will just sag off of him and collapse in the paint and you have a bunch of low 3pt volume guys out who can’t hit those consistently and a team that doesn’t practice ball movement either to consistently create good looks. Not even going into how dumb and unfair it is to expect Reed to turn into a contender-level PG and also meet Udoka’s demands on defense in what is practically his 1.5th season.

All of those and more were obvious pitfalls even us who are casuals compared to those guys pointed out and yet they seem perfectly content with their decisions. I don’t know if this is phoning it in cause their job is secure, or they know something we don’t, maybe these guys are awesome and they think it’s just about clearing mental blocks (which you still have to take into account in your planning with young guys, and maybe get your coach to be more supportive on that path).

I think this offseason will be very telling - I don’t need a rebuild or hard reset or anything nor I think that’s super viable, I just want to see a roster with backups in the right places, a bench that can actually contribute, and healthy and reliable depth. That will be the final test imo.

 

I guarantee you Ime co-signed on our lack of guards this year.

 

Again, I think Sengun for Giannis happens no matter what - this is just more evidence towards that.

 

I discussed this at length in other threads, but I don't think you can play Amen and Giannis together, even assuming you get Myles Turner in the deal for Giannis.

So, either Amen only plays like 25mpg and you stagger their minutes a bunch (Ime Udoka will never do this, so you better be bringing in a new head coach, plus it's a waste of Amen's talent) or your spacing is even worse than it is right now. Remember, Giannis likes to play from the perimeter similar to Amen. Both guys you have up at the wings are going to have their defenders camped out in the paint 100% of the time.

Or, do you trade Amen too? But for who, and how do you match salaries? At this point you've traded the majority of the roster including two of your best three players.

Even as one of Amen's biggest fans, I'm actually somewhat open to the latter idea, depending on what you're getting back for him. I just think it's wildly unrealistic, and I don't think it will actually happen, and I think the plan of "just trade Sengun/roleplayers/picks for Giannis and pray" is a bad one that will not work.

 

Just with my eyeballs... It just seems like Sengun thinks he is the franchise player and has been overcompensating for it.

 

Did they expect young guys to take major leaps or just keep improving?

There was a reason why national media and great NBA podcast community were high on the Rockets before FVV went out the year.

 

It's actually crazy that an all-time great and a first ballot hall of famer is such an immature shithead

 

Ime ain’t the one co-signing. He’s doing the roster construction and his boy (who is supposed to be his boss) is being dominated by him. I guarantee it.

 

My argument is they thought during the planning phase they could still contend with key pieces gone. FVV and Stevo not being super available, and KD potentially missing a bunch of games are obvious risks with high probability that you have to plan around. They didn’t, which means they thought young guys would take major leaps and be able to cover - or simply put, they are incompetent.

 

Yeah I'm off the KD thing.

Maybe there was something Bari learned from him and that's good, maybe that will be worth the 1 year of KD, but I wouldn't be mad if we traded him for whatever.

Would make us a worse team, would mean we are not close to being contenders...but then again, are we close to being contenders now lol?

Also, I want to give our young guys space to grow. They might not ever be MVP level players, sure, but whenever KD goes out you see the ball moving and things just look smoother rather than...where is KD? Get KD the ball. Watch KD shoot...okay, run back on defense.

 

Amen is gone if you get Giannis or he comes off the bench. Jabari too if he doesn’t turn into a better and more consistent shooter. Reed probably too. I also don’t think it makes sense to drive a KD + Giannis pair with Fred and Reed or Amen as backups. A Giannis trade is an all-in move, you build around him from scratch. That also means you admit the rebuild has failed, and you’re tanking again past their 2 - 3 year window. Or you extend the suffering over multiple years. I would just reset now instead.

Giannis also picks where he goes. I wouldn’t come to West if I was him and risk ruining my reputation at the tail end of my career. I don’t think he wants a costar like KD who can take some of his shine away. And that ‘I can show you how to carry a team’ joke might have killed any chance of them ever pairing up. If there’s one guy who’s that thin-skinned in the league it’s KD lol.

 

It not only will not work. It will set us up to be mediocre for at least a decade. KD is toast after next year and probably won’t play another full season at 38. Giannis will be a super max 32 year old without an outside shot and starting to break down. If it’s only Sengun, filler like DFS and 1 pick, it would be more palpable, but it still wouldn’t work. Amen and Giannis are redundant and Giannis with Sengun wouldn’t be any better than what we have now after mortgaging our future. I’m not sure, I’ll be alive by the time they are relative again if they get Giannis, so I’d probably stop watching the NBA altogether.