Durant trade talks over, Nets and star “agreed to move forward with our partnership”

The Kevin Durant trade demand saga is over. For now.

And the Brooklyn Nets are back to being serious title contenders.

The Nets announced that Durant and his manager met with owner Joe Tsai and GM Sean Marks on Monday and have “agreed to move forward with our partnership.”

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— Brooklyn Nets (@BrooklynNets) August 23, 2022

On June 30, Kevin Durant upended the NBA world and demanded a trade, preferably to the Suns or Heat. Brooklyn took him at his word and spoke to those teams — and every other team in the league — about trading for Durant, but the Nets kept their demands sky-high: An All-Star level player under 25, multiple other players and picks. While teams put some interesting offers on the table, the Nets refused to lower their trade demands (especially in the wake of the haul Utah got in the Rudy Gobert trade).

Trade talks stalled out as teams would not up their offers to meet the Nets’ demands; there was no bidding war. Durant and his team tried to ratchet up the pressure on Brooklyn (throwing down a “them or me” ultimatum concerning Marks and coach Steve Nash), but Tsai and the Nets would not back down.

The Nets called Durant’s bluff and won this hand. Durant has four years left on his contract, and there may be more hands to be played down the line, but for now the Nets got what they wanted. (This all appears to have started because the Nets would not give the unreliable Kyrie Irving a long-term extension — KD and Irving are very close. However, because Irving eventually opted in, he has just one year left on his contract. Roster issues will come up again.)

This entire situation has echoes of Kobe Bryant’s very public trade demands back in 2007. No deal came together, and by the middle of