Kevin Durant was pursued by nearly every team in the NBA this offseason. Ultimately, his decision was the Golden State Warriors where he will help form a super team of epic proportions.
But before Durant made his decision, he had a difficult choice to make between several teams. The Warriors and his former team, the Oklahoma City Thunder, seemed to be at the top of the list.
Most assumed the third team that could potentially swoop in to get KD was the Boston Celtics. However, that may not have been the case.
Los Angeles Clippers coach Doc Rivers spoke to Adrian Wojnarowski of The Vertical about his team’s pursuit of Durant. In short, Rivers claimed that the Clippers were the third place team. (h/t RealGM for the transcription)
“We were willing to take the gamble if we felt we were in it. And we were in it. We were in the top-3 at the very end,” said Rivers. “But we had to make a couple calls to (Durant’s camp). We got two players to delay an hour (before making their decisions). We had two players on our team who could sign for more money but they were going to wait another hour to stay with us.
“The second thing is we had to get this right. If we’re going to go after Durant, if we can get him, let’s stay in it. It’s worth it, even if we don’t get him. If we’re not going to get him, we have to make that decision. We have to do our job business wise.”
“We asked a simple question. We sat around trying to figure out what’s the right question. And the first question we asked is ‘are we in the top-3?’ and they said ‘yes’,” said Rivers. “That made us feel good. We talked about it. My next question is ‘are we in the top-2?’ We made the decision, if they say ‘no’ then we go. If they say ‘yes’ we stay. They said ‘no’.”
This could confirm previous reports that Durant was “blown away” by the Clippers’ pitch. That said, it should also be taken with a grain of salt considering the source.
The Clippers have a great team to sell Durant on, but signing him was always going to be difficult. They would have either had to trade away one of their big three of fill out their roster with nothing but minimum deals. That seemed like a hard sell for Kevin Durant.
