Deandre Ayton’s Deal and the Impact on the Durant Sweepstakes

On the Friday edition of The Crossover, former Suns GM Ryan McDonough discusses Deandre Ayton, the Suns and superstar trade demands.

Mark J. Rebilas/USA TODAY Sports

The following transcript is an excerpt from The Crossover NBA podcast. Listen to the full episode on podcast players everywhere or on SI.com.

On the Friday edition, Howard Beck welcomes former Suns GM Ryan McDonough to discuss Deandre Ayton’s offer sheet with the Pacers, the Suns and the implications for Kevin Durant and the Nets. They also discuss the potential of a Donovan Mitchell trade and whether the Knicks have enough to get him. Plus, McDonough proposes a solution to stem the tide of superstar trade demands.

Howard Beck: So tell me if I’m wrong, but it seems to me that this has just thoroughly screwed with all these options about Durant and the Suns and one solution for the Nets coming off the board.

Ryan McDonough: No, you’re right. And one other mitigating factor as far as an Ayton in-season trade, Deandre Ayton cannot be traded from the Phoenix Suns, but to 28 teams, until January 15th … but he can’t be traded to the Indiana Pacers for one year. 

One of the things I’ve wondered, and I may be in the minority here, but I wonder if the Brooklyn Nets want to trade Kevin Durant or if they’re setting a bar so incredibly high—and in my opinion, I think that bar got even higher after Utah got what they ended up getting for Rudy Gobert—that the Nets say, O.K., yeah, give us seven first-round picks and pick swaps and a good All-Star in his prime and a young player, a package that no team really has or would offer. Because if you look at the rest of the Nets’ moves, in my opinion, they’re win-now moves. Re-signing Patty Mills, re-signing Nic Claxton, bringing in T.J. Warren, they’re win-now moves. Kyrie opted in.

Beck: Traded for Royce O’Neale.

McDonough: You gave up draft assets for Royce O’Neale. It’s important for your listeners to keep in mind, too, that the Nets cannot be bad because they owe their unprotected firsts and pick swaps to the Houston Rockets over the next five years.

So I strongly feel as a former executive with the Celtics and Suns, that Brooklyn’s best option is to set an incredibly high bar. If somebody can pull multiple rabbits out of hats and match it, then maybe they do trade Kevin Durant. Most likely, or almost certainly, no team is able to come up with all that stuff. Because we’re talking about one of the all-time great players in his prime who has four years left on a contract with no options. And we know what he’s capable of if he’s healthy. So the Nets, sometime maybe in August or early September around Labor Day, go to Kevin and say, Look, we tried; we value you more than any other team in the league does.

One interesting idea that was mentioned by Eddie Johnson the other day, my former colleague with the Phoenix Suns and also with Sirius XM is that he wonders if it would behoove the Brooklyn Nets to get Kevin Durant on the court with Ben Simmons, if and when Simmons is physically and mentally healthy, to get him excited about the possibilities and remember how talented that guy is if he’s right.

I’ve been in the minority all along. I’ve looked at the betting markets with the Suns as the incredibly heavy favorite to get Durant, and the Miami Heat and all that. I think he’s a Brooklyn Net. You know, people could play this back and throw egg in my face. And I’d understand that, but if I were in the Nets’ front office—and it’s easy for me to say, doing an interview here with you in the bowels of Cox Pavilion in Las Vegas—but if I were the Brooklyn Nets, you’d probably go through the process. And then sometime later in the summer say, Kevin, we love you. We’re sorry. Both sides have made mistakes. The relationship has gotten to this point, let’s fix it. We have a championship-contending team. We want to build around you. Give us a chance. We tried to trade you, but we couldn’t.

Beck: I’ve had that sense, too. And I can’t say that it’s, you know, based on a deep amount of intel. I have some, you probably have some, but yeah, no one gets the sense that there’s any urgency there, nor should there be. Because even if they decide they do wanna trade him, I’ve said the same thing. The same premise applies to Sean Marks and the Nets that applied in my view to Daryl Morey and the Sixers when it came to Ben Simmons. You don’t make the deal just for the sake of solving this problem, or just for the sake of alleviating the headache. You ride it out, you deal with whatever you gotta deal with.

And I think the Sixers, look, we can debate whether or not they got the right deal with swapping Simmons for Harden, but it is the deal that they wanted and they weren’t gonna make a deal that they didn’t want. And the same thing applies as far as I’m concerned—I will defend the Nets and Sean Marks to the end if they do this in a way that prioritizes the best possible return for them, ’cause that’s their first responsibility. It’s not just to offload Durant, let him go where he wants and take back some lesser package. I think they’re doing this the right way or what’s right for the Nets.

And I do think if you asked me and somebody did the other day, like what’s the most likely outcome. I said the most likely outcome, or if you’re gonna say which team he is most likely to be with on opening night, I’m still going with the Nets. It doesn’t mean I think that that’s absolutely going to happen. It just means that of all the other options out there … it still seems like that’s the most likely one. Because we’ve already gotten to this point where there is no clear trade partner, and it’s difficult for anybody to provide the value that they want.

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