NBA Rumors: Kevin Durant and the Nets still aren't on the same page

After all the drama and cryptic tweets, Kyrie Irving decided to opt in on the final year of his deal and came back to the Brooklyn Nets. No team but the Los Angeles Lakers were willing to pursue him given his long history of unavailability and off-court controversies.

But even though Kyrie forcedly decided to run it back with the Nets, it seems like things are far from good between him and the organization. After all, they refused to offer him a max contract extension and allowed him to seek a trade.

In reality, the Nets were more concerned about how losing Kyrie could also drive Kevin Durant away from the team. According to Adrian Wojnarowski, that was a real possibility if Irving had found a new home before opting in.

Woj: Kevin Durant Was Loyal To Kyrie

“Well I think Kevin Durant was very loyal to Kyrie Irving through this process and certainly you know wanted to create the idea that if Kyrie Irving walked, that Kevin Durant might ask for a trade,” Woj said.

“In the end you know the leveraging on Irving’s side just didn’t allow for him to get the kind of new deal he wanted and so now Kevin Durant has what he did want, which was Kyrie Irving back on the Nets this season,” Woj added. “So the expectation right now is that Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving will move forward for the Nets on this roster this year. But, Kevin Durant hasn’t talked yet, he hasn’t expressed that publically, we’ll wait and see but this is the outcome that he wanted, which was Irving back with the Nets this year, the two of them playing together.”

Durant Blames The Nets For The Kyrie Fiasco

So, even though Kyrie stood put, the damage is already done. According to NBA insider Logan Murdock, Durant is still disappointed at the fact that the Nets didn’t ‘try to understand’ Kyrie last season, and he hasn’t even spoken to them in weeks:

“Kevin Durant has not talked to the team in weeks, and I don’t think Kevin is confident in the front office right now,” Murdock said. “I don’t know if he’s at the stage of leaving, but there’s a big uneasiness not only from the Kyrie side but from the KD side as well.”

“I think that his biggest beef is that he didn’t feel like the Nets front office grew to try to understand Kyrie,” Murdock added. “And I would push back and say when a guy leaves for two weeks at a time, Kyrie earns the lion’s share of the blame. But I think that Kevin feels like, ‘Hey man, when you guys didn’t try to understand this guy, you guys didn’t figure out where he was coming from.”

Both Durant and Kyrie are expected to be back with the team next season. But it seems like the drama is far from over, and this won’t be the last we hear about the Nets stars and their dysfunctional dynamics.