Did you hear the rumor about Kevin Durant possibly joining the Houston Rockets to team up with buddy James Harden?
Sure you did.
Did you also hear the one about how that’s not going to happen?
From ESPN.com’s Marc Stein:
Former teammates Kevin Durant and James Harden are “hanging out” this week, ?but the close friends’ ?brief reunion isn’t expected to have a real impact on Durant’s forthcoming free agency, according to league sources.
Sources told ESPN.com that Harden’s Houston Rockets are not a team Durant plans to consider when he becomes an unrestricted free agent July 1, despite Harden’s presence there and the Rockets’ long-known intent to try to chase him.
This is pretty predictable. Especially now.
First off, the Rockets are in the middle of a pretty significant transition. They have only one real cornerstone in James Harden, just hired a new head coach in Mike D’Antoni and aren’t expected to retain free agent Dwight Howard. There is just too much work to be done.
And Durant needs to be extra selective now after the Oklahoma City Thunder not only made the Western Conference Finals, but finished one win shy of an NBA Finals bid that would have entailed them beating two of the best teams in NBA history.
If he bolts from Oklahoma City, his next team needs to be an immediate, or at the every least an imminent, upgrade. And that does not describe the Rockets.
It describes the Golden State Warriors and San Antonio Spurs. It may even soon describe the Boston Celtics. But the Rockets? Not so much.
