Kevin Durant Trade Grades ('25 edition)

Throwing up the Bat-Signal and getting Superman

The inevitable is now the present. Kevin Durant has been traded once more, this time to the Houston Rockets.

The trade:

Houston Rockets receive: Kevin Durant

Phoenix Suns receive: Jalen Green, Dillon Brooks, the #10 pick in this year’s draft (which was originally the Suns’ pick, anyway), five second-rounders

I try to give an overview of the tradee in most of my trade grades. Strengths, weaknesses, tendencies. You don’t need that with Kevin Durant. His game is the same as it ever was. His defense has slipped some, but he’s still okay on that end (and better than that on occasion). He can pass when he wants to. He can rebound when he needs to. But Durant is first and foremost a bucket-getter, an elite shooter from all over the floor despite taking some of the hardest shots in the game.

This is what Houston wants. This is what Houston will get:

Here’s my favorite sum-up of the Kevin Durant experience: Lineups with Durant haven’t been below the 78th percentile in offensive rating since before Lebron James joined the Miami Heat. There are readers of this blog younger than that (and shout out to you for having exquisite taste at such a tender age!). In other words, having Durant on the court has guaranteed a potent offense for a decade and a half.

You know who could use some shotmaking? The Houston Rockets, who put up a worse effective field goal percentage than Utah, Philadelphia, and Toronto last season. They were a below-average shooting team from literally every location on the floor. Houston still cobbled together an above-average offense with bludgeoning offensive rebounds, but there are limits to an offense whose entire strategy is built around misses.

Durant will help. He shot 53% from the field and 43% from deep last year while slightly ramping up his share of shots from beyond the arc (thanks, Mike Budenholzer!) and drawing a handful of free throws per game. Although Durant turned 36 last year, the only major drop-off in his game (both by the numbers and on tape) came on the passing end, but it’s hard to tell how much of that was due to the Suns’ overall dysfunction. Durant clearly had a “**** it, I’m shooting” attitude for much of the season. It was rarely a bad decision in a vacuum, although you wonder how that can affect teammates over time.

Then again, Houston’s remaining players may be mentally prepared for such a thing. They already had a teammate like that in Jalen Green, except Green was far less liable to make the shot!