02-23-2025, 12:59 AM
(02-22-2025, 11:42 PM)mvossman Wrote: I don't think that is how it played out. I don't think either of those guys were considered as valuable as DFS. I believe Durant asked specifically for DFS (and then asked to be traded himself soon after).
It is correct that there was never a scenario in doing the Kyrie trade where DFS could have been replaced by a Green-Hardy package. I think that idea was floated somewhere post trade in a forum or by tweet or speculative blog, but it was transparently nonsense, because it couldn't have even been considered.
The issue was salary. As it was, the Mavs had a challenge in matching the very large Kyrie contract (almost 39M), and DFS contract (almost 13M) was a necessary piece to add to SD's 19.5M salary. Had they replaced DFS with Green-Hardy (total salary of about 4M), the salary match would have failed badly.
There may have also been demands for this player or that, but getting to a salary match was a big issue in making that deal work.