Kevin Durant keeps a soft spot in his heart for every NBA and college team he’s been on.
That includes the Brooklyn Nets, Golden State Warriors, Oklahoma City Thunder, and Texas Longhorns.
After his 23-point return in the Phoenix Suns’ 127-100 home win over the Los Angeles Lakers on Tuesday, Durant spoke about facing his former team, the Brooklyn Nets (8-10), in the second of back-to-back home games Wednesday. The Suns will also host the Warriors on Saturday.
“I’m excited to see everybody,” Durant said about the Nets. “I miss those guys. I’m a Net for life. I’m always gonna say that. I always feel that. It’s gonna be my heart and my blood forever, so it’s always good to see family, people that I grinded with.”
Durant will play against the Nets for the third time since they dealt him to the Suns at the 2022-23 season trade deadline. He averaged 30 points in the Phoenix-Brooklyn home and away matchups that they split last season.
Durant was in Brooklyn for four years after he was sent there in a sign-and-trade following his third and final year with Golden State. He actually played three seasons in Brooklyn because he was out during the entire 2019-20 season from a torn Achilles he suffered in the 2019 NBA Finals.
The Nets never went further than the East semifinals with Durant. That team flopped amid the championship expectations of their former Big 3 of Durant, Kyrie Irving, and James Harden. They played just 16 games together because of injuries, after that superteam was formed in January 2021 when Brooklyn acquired Harden from Houston.
In a domino effect, Harden was the first of their Big 3 to request a trade and was shipped to Philadelphia in February 2022. Then Irving and Durant did the same in succession in February 2023, to Dallas and Phoenix, respectively.
The Nets were swept in the 2022 and 2023 playoffs’ first rounds, and are rebuilding since they dealt Mikal ridges to New York in June. Bridges, along with Cam Johnson, were sent to Brooklyn in the deal that brought Durant to Phoenix.
Following the Nets’ sluggish 5-9 start through Nov. 17, they’ve won their last two games and three of four. They are eighth in the Eastern Conference standings after beating Sacramento (8-10) and the West’s No. 1 Golden State (12-5) in back-to-back road games on Sunday and Monday.
Brooklyn’s top scorers are Cam Thomas (24.7 points per game) and Johnson (18.3), who played his first four seasons with the Suns. That included their 2021 finals run.
“They’re playing great ball,” Durant said. “People didn’t expect them to be out here beating teams like Golden State. … They had some good wins throughout the season so far. I’m looking forward to seeing everybody and competing against them.”
Durant additionally described how he feels about the Warriors, Thunder, and Texas. He led the Warriors to two consecutive titles and earned two Finals MVP awards in 2017 and 2018, and lost in the 2012 finals with the Thunder.
Durant was a one-and-done from Texas, drafted in 2007 by Seattle Supersonics, which were relocated and renamed the Oklahoma City Thunder the next year.
Similar to 1980s pop singer Paul Young’s chorus of his memorable hit love song “Every Time You Go Away,” Durant says he sentimentally takes a piece of all his former and current teams with him.
“I took something from every journey,” Durant said. “So yeah, Warrior for life, Thunder for life, Net for life, Sun for life, Longhorn for life.”