Kevin Durant isn’t sure what to expect when he returns to Brooklyn.
Fans could cheer him, focusing on the excitement that Durant delivered as one of the best players ever to wear a Nets uniform.
Or perhaps there’s too much resentment over how quickly he wanted to wear another team’s.
It should be a wide range of emotions Wednesday when Durant plays in Brooklyn for the first time since being traded to the Phoenix Suns nearly a year ago.
“It just depends on how the people wake up,” Durant said. “A lot of people don’t know what to say or how to feel about me. It’s up in the air on what may happen.”
The fans were undeniably thrilled in July 2019, when Durant and Kyrie Irving decided together to sign with the Nets as free agents. Both players were gone just 3 1/2 years later, winners of a grand total of one playoff series while they were in Brooklyn.
Durant had more trade requests than that, asking out after the 2021-22 season, then again in the middle of last season after the Nets dealt Irving to Dallas. Durant seems to understand the complicated legacy he left, responding to a question on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, about whether he deserved a tribute video by saying he didn’t want one.
“The people that follow the Brooklyn Nets, they understood what we went through and those little moments that we had and shared as a team that the fans rallied around,” Durant said. “Hopefully, they can remember that stuff.”
Stuff like Durant’s franchise-record 29.9 points per game in 2021-22. Or his memorable postseason performances against the eventual champion Milwaukee Bucks in the 2021 Eastern Conference semifinals: 49 points, 17 rebounds and 10 assists in a Game 5 victory, 48 points in a Game 7 overtime loss.
Things were only supposed to get better for Brooklyn after that. Irving and James Harden were hurt in most of that series, but having their Big Three back and healthy made the Nets a favorite to win their first NBA title in 2022.
Instead, things…
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