Kevin Durant may be looking to throw it back to his old college days.
Chris Mannix of Sports Illustrated discussed the future of the Phoenix Suns star Kevin Durant in his latest mailbag column this week. Mannix said in the column that he believes that Durant wants to end up with the Houston Rockets this offseason.
“I think if the Rockets wanted Durant before the trade deadline, it would have happened,” Mannix wrote. “Durant has a lot of respect for [Rockets head coach] Ime Udoka and in Houston he could be a missing piece to a title contender. I’d keep an eye on that after this season.”
Mannix did note that he was just expressing his opinion about Durant. But even on its own, the idea of Durant on the Rockets (already one of the six teams recently mentioned in connection with him) makes plenty of sense.
The former NBA MVP Durant played his college ball at the University of Texas and will presumably want to play for a contender at 36 going on 37. The Rockets meet that category at 45-25 this season, which now has them second in the Western Conference. On top of that, Houston has several players on their current roster (Steven Adams, Jeff Green, Aaron Holiday, David Roddy, and Jock Landale) who were teammates with Durant at various points of his professional career.
We know that the Suns are setting a fairly high asking price for Durant in any potential trade this summer. But if the Rockets hypothetically want to offer some combination of youngsters such as Jalen Green and Jabari Smith Jr. to go along with a veteran like Dillon Brooks plus some draft-pick compensation (which would allow them to hold onto true core guys like Alperen Sengun, Amen Thompson, and Tari Eason), that might be enough to entice Phoenix to get the deal done.
