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Basketball superstar Kevin Durant stays with the Brooklyn Nets.
After a meeting with head coach Steve Nash, team manager Sean Marks and owners Joe and Clara Wu Tsai, it was agreed to continue on the common path, the NBA team said in a statement.
"We're focused on basketball with one goal in mind: building a sustainable franchise to bring a championship to Brooklyn," Marks said in the statement.
On June 30, a few days before the start of the transfer period in the North American professional basketball league NBA, Durant had formally requested a trade to another team.
In the NBA, players can only be bought out of current contracts and signed by other teams in exceptional cases.
Changes usually happen either after the end of the contract or through trades - swap deals with players or selection rights at the draft, the annual appointment of NBA newcomers.
Durant only signed a new four-year contract with a total salary of almost 200 million euros in August 2021.
Individually, the 33-year-old winger remains one of the best players in the world, averaging 29.9 points, 7.4 rebounds and 6.4 assists per game last season.
So far, almost nothing has worked in Brooklyn
As a team, however, things have been going downhill for Durant since his move to the Nets.
The two-time NBA champion had previously played with the Golden State Warriors in a historic star ensemble with Stephen Curry, before he met friend Kyrie Irving in Brooklyn in 2019.
Durant sat out the first season after tearing his Achilles tendon, then James Harden, the next star player, was signed during the 2020/2021 season.
The trio of Durant, Irving and Harden failed in the quarterfinals of the NBA playoffs and broke up again last season.
Irving was barred from most games because he refused a vaccination.
In terms of sport, things were disappointing and Harden expressed a desire to change.
Brooklyn traded him to the Philadelphia 76ers in exchange for injured star player Ben Simmons.
In time for the season finale, Irving was admitted to the games despite a lack of vaccination, but the team was knocked out 0-4 in the first round of the knockout phase after games against the Boston Celtics.
After the season, Durant then requested a trade.
There are several reasons why this didn't happen: On the one hand, Durant is a unique player with an individual class that Brooklyn didn't want to give up.
On the other hand, there have already been trades by star players this summer with surprisingly high returns for the losing teams - the exchange rate for superstars is currently very high.
A recording team would have had to give up too much to sign Durant.
The Miami Heat, the Phoenix Suns, the Toronto Raptors, the Boston Celtics and the Memphis Grizzlies have been mentioned as interested parties in the US media in recent weeks.
mrk
