With the trade deadline having passed and the entire day being hectic as usual with plenty of moves, the focus turns to the second half of the 2016-17 NBA campaign. All-Star weekend and the days prior to the trade deadline are some of the most stressful for General Managers across the association, as they try to add the requisite pieces to their roster to make their team that much better.
However, some contending teams are content with the way their team is performing and how their roster looks and once again one of those teams was the Golden State Warriors. While the Warriors didn’t make any moves on the trade front this year, one of their players was tracking rumors all week long, Kevin Durant. Reportedly, Durant has a real passion for the business side of things in the NBA and hopes to one day be a GM or own a franchise once he decides to hang it up. Following from Anthony Slater of The Mercury News:
“Tried to make an effort to stay off of Hoops Hype, not follow the tweets of the basketball media,” Durant said at the Warriors’ Thursday shootaround. “But always this time of year, I find myself (back following).”
That’s because, Durant says, he has dreams of being an NBA general manager someday and he likes to monitor the latest buzz and try to figure out what teams might be thinking heading toward the trade deadline.
“Want to be a GM, want to own a team, hopefully own a team and run it,” Durant said. “So I look to see what rumors are getting out there, what deals are being presented to these teams. Try to figure that stuff out. It’s fun, especially for a guy who knows that part of the business.”
With such major changes happening to multiple teams every year around this time, being a GM or front office executive of any sort for that matter is a challenging, but rewarding job. As a basketball head, it’s always a dream to be able to build your roster from the ground up and make moves based on however you see fit, and it seems Kevin Durant feels the exact same way.
We’ve seen other great players make the transition to GM once their playing days are over, chief among that group being Michael Jordan who currently runs the Charlotte Hornets. Durant has usually found success in his playing career due to his elite abilities and maybe he can do the same at the conclusion of his NBA tenure if he decides to pursue running his own team.
