Kevin Durant shook the media with his trade request a couple of weeks ago. According to Alex Caruso of the Chicago Bulls, this is players realizing their power and using it to their advantage – something that teams have been doing for many years.
“I had an interesting epiphany on this the other day… Everyone is complaining about players having power and not honoring whatever contract, or wanting to do it. It just hit me somebody said it, the players are finally treating this like the teams and the organizations have for so many years,” the 28-year-old shooting guard said on The Old Man & the Three podcast.
“They finally are realizing the business side of this like, ‘Okay, I have leverage. I’m an asset. Let me make this work to the best of my ability because if the organization or the team has a chance to upgrade, they’re gonna upgrade…’
Caruso also talked about what he called ‘horror stories’ of player learning that they got traded via social media or TV and not from the team itself. Now the players took that power to themselves and are forcing trades.
“If you’re in the league and you have this type of wealth and income, it’s a different thing. And if you’re sitting at home reading about this guy trying to get from $40 million to $50 million, I understand that, that’s a real thing.
“Even to sit back and just look at it and just think that for so many years you see horror stories of guys finding out Twitter, finding out on TV that they got traded. I think it just gets finally gets to a point where players are like ‘Alright, I’m going to do the same thing.'”
NBA commissioner Adam Silver holds a different view on Durant’s trade request. He thinks that the players should respect their contracts as teams invest a lot in them.
