The Phoenix Suns have already gotten the ball rolling on their 2025-26 reset by firing coach Mike Budenholzer, and all signs point to a Kevin Durant trade being the next move. At 37 years old and entering the final season of his contract at $54 million, how much market value does Durant, as great as he still is, possess? Nobody can answer that question for sure. There aren’t any comparisons for a guy this good at this age in this contractual situation getting traded, but we know the Suns are going to be looking to recoup at least some of the draft haul they gave up to get Durant in the first place.
You’re going to be hearing about a lot of the usual suspects in terms of potential Durant destinations. A trade with the Miami Heat was reportedly “there to be done” at the February deadline — one Durant was reportedly open to — and you can bet Miami’s name will be back in the mix.
Houston makes all the sense in the world with its ability to give up intriguing young players (perhaps a Reed Sheppard and/or Cam Whitmore) without depleting its core depth while actually giving Phoenix back control of some of its own picks and enabling the start of a potential tank rebuild.
You’ll hear about a Golden State reunion with Warriors forward Jonathan Kuminga, who has lost his place in Steve Kerr’s rotation for now and will be a restricted free agent over the summer, as a piece who could be signed and traded.
The Dallas Mavericks are desperate, whether they’ll admit it or not, to salvage this Luka Dončić debacle with an immediate contender, and you will hear their name for sure. Same goes for the Knicks, especially if they go out meekly in the playoffs. Linking Durant to the Celtics is a time-honored tradition. Somehow, the Lakers will come up, too.
Having said all that, from a purely basketball perspective, there are a handful of smaller-market teams to watch as potential Durant suitors. And that’s what we’re going to focus on here — teams that are in the unique position of being a Durant-type player from contention with the ability to offer an intriguing package while not completely compromising their current, more elongated timeline.
This is the biggest small-market team to watch. The Spurs might feel like they have all the time in the world to build a contender around Victor Wembanyama. And relatively speaking, they probably do. But when they made the trade for De’Aaron Fox, they announced their intention to compete right now, and nothing would stamp that point home more emphatically than adding Durant.
The Spurs are among the most draft-capital-rich teams in the league, so the picks aren’t a problem, and they can make the money work with Devin Vassell, a really nice player, and Harrison Barnes, who can definitely help a Phoenix team that would still be trying to win with Devin Booker.
Are the Spurs ready to push the fast-forward button? If they are, Durant would turn them into an immediate contender considering the depth of quality players they would still have left with the cap space and plenty of remaining draft capital to potentially add even more.
Pairing Anthony Edwards with Durant would make the Timberwolves a no-brainer contender with the kind of defensive infrastructure they have established. Sure, the Wolves’ offensive rating looks like that of a good team, but Edwards is the only guy you can truly count on in high-leverage games and possessions. He needs someone else defenses fear (no disrespect to how well Julius Randle played down the stretch). If Randle keeps it up in the playoffs and the Wolves upset the Lakers, maybe they play out Randle’s contract next season, but if that’s not the case they will almost certainly be looking to improve in a meaningful way.
Speaking of Randle, he could be the root of the money to make the deal work and he’s on an expiring contract that wouldn’t sink Phoenix’s books. Rudy Gobert could be a candidate to move if the Suns want to put Booker with a guy who has historically guaranteed you a top-10 defense, while Minnesota could fully shift to Naz Reid at center.
Minnesota is lacking future draft capital because it pretty much dumped it all in the deal to get Gobert, but Rob Dillingham was drafted No. 8 overall last season and has upside as a dynamic scorer. Minnesota can put together a package that would keep Phoenix competitive, mostly, built around guys like Randle and/or Gobert and possibly Donte DiVincenzo or even Jaden McDaniels to put with Booker and Bradley Beal.
Detroit has made an extraordinary leap as the first team in NBA history to triple its win total from the previous season. The Pistons grabbed the No. 6 seed and will face the Knicks in the first round. They can make that a hell of a series, but the foundation here is solid even if they don’t win. Cade Cunningham is going to make All-NBA, and the defensive tone has been set. Put Durant with Cunningham, who would suddenly have all kinds of room to penetrate, and Jalen Duren while keeping the solid support staff Detroit has built and this is a team that can take another massive leap next season.
And here’s the thing: The Pistons can offer a pretty sweet package in return without compromising their core. They own all their own first-round picks beyond 2025, and they have a really promising young players like Jaden Ivey (who may have become a convenient odd man out with the way the Pistons played without him due to his injury from January on this season), Ron Holland and Ausar Thompson; Although they probably wouldn’t, or at least shouldn’t, be willing to part with Thompson.
Orlando has an elite defense but can’t score. Durant obviously fills that void, and he would make the Magic, already loaded with length, even bigger across the perimeter while keeping the longer Paolo Banchero-Franz Wagner timeline intact.
Put Durant with Banchero and Wagner and you have at least a conference finals-level team with the hope of more in the short term. Orlando owns all its own picks moving forward plus Denver’s first-rounder this season, and they can offer Jalen Suggs or Jonathan Isaac, who would make the money as the young upside piece that Phoenix will covet.
Orlando, which hasn’t won a playoff series in 15 years, is ready for a jump. They could aim lower and just try to finally add a starting level point guard, but the honeymoon of an up-and-coming team can end a lot earlier than you think and seemingly overnight you’re just in another rocky marriage. The next team on this list can possibly relate.
If LeBron James went back to Cleveland to deliver the first championship in franchise history, why can’t Durant do the same for OKC? This will depend heavily on how the Thunder perform in these playoffs; there’s a very good chance they win it all this season, in which case there would be absolutely no reason to compromise everything they have going with all this two-way depth for Durant, who in turn would probably never want to go back to OKC after they won the championship without him and endure all the same bandwagon backlash he got with the Warriors.
But if the Thunder underperform in these playoffs? That could be the perfect storm that clears the way for a full-circle Durant-OKC reunion, because we know they would be right there for a title and have more trade capital than they know what to do with. A deal for Isaiah Hartenstein, Isaiah Joe and Aaron Wiggins, just as an example, works on the money side.
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