Getty Kevin Durant
Kevin Durant came to New York.
Insert cheers!
Ah, yes. Durant lives in New York City as many predicted.
Only problem is that Durant is not in the borough of Manhattan as many thought. Instead he joined the Nets in Brooklyn.
MSG Networks Knicks color commentator, Walt Frazier wasn’t happy.”Very disappointed,” the Knicks’ two-time NBA champion and seven time NBA All-Star told me.
“It seemed like it was going to happen.”
Many thought Durant joining the New York Knicks was a done deal.
He was surely the team’s primary target in free agency and it was believed that he and Irving were a packaged deal.
Durant had many ties to the organization. His business partner, Rich Kleiman, the co-founder and partner in Durant’s The Durant Company and Thirty Five Media, grew up a huge Knicks fan.
Durant also mentored Knicks forward, a Seattle, Washington native, when Triier was in high school and Durant was a member of the Seattle Sonics before they moved to Oklahoma and became the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Knicks assistant coach, Royal Ivey and Durant are best friends. A Harlem native, the two were Texas Longhorns teammates in college and were Oklahoma City Thunder teammates for three years in the NBA.
KD is also the godfather of Ivey’s daughter, Lyric Ella.
KD has other plans. So did Kyrie Irving who also joined Brooklyn via free agency.
A West Orange, New Jersey native, Irving grew up liking the then-New Jersey Nets when they ran the NBA’s Eastern Conference during the days of Jason Kidd, Kenyon Martin and Richard Jefferson.
Irving was a fan of Kidd.
“Watching him play was a pleasure,” Irving told me of Kidd when he was hired as head coach of Brooklyn back in 2013.
“His IQ. Just watching the way he plays the game. Not many people have that niche and that feel for the game.”
As a kid, Irving watched that Nets team make back to back trips to the NBA Finals in 2002 and 2003. Ironically, the Nets were coached by Byron Scott who lived in Livingston, NJ; a town next door to West Orange.
“Him and Kyrie, it was almost too good to be true,” Frazier told me.
Meanhwhile back at the ranch: Clyde Frazier drops a Knicks bombshell about KD.
“I still think that if he didn’t get injured yeah he might be a Knick,” he said.
I then asked him if he had the opportunity to pick one player between Kyrie or KD to join the Knicks who would it be.
“KD was the guy that I thought was going to turn it around,” he told me.
The Nets and the Knicks begin training camp later this month.
Knicks guard, Kevin Knox was vocal about Durant and Irving this week.
Knicks’ Kevin Knox & RJ Barrett dont care about the Brooklyn Nets & getting Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant has added fuel to the fire.
He believes the Knicks have a rivalry.
“Of course the Nets got two good superstars this summer,” he told me Monday night while on a panel discussing Puma’s Clyde Hardwood Sneaker alongside Knicks legend Walt Clyde Frazier and Knicks teammate, RJ Barrett.
“But it just fuels the fire for us.”