Connecting the Strings On A Kevin Durant-To-Minnesota Trade

Charlie Kelly circles a mail room in a 2014 It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia episode. A cigarette hangs from his mouth as he frantically explains the map behind him, which is littered with envelopes, newspapers, and string connecting push pins.

“It’s Pepe Silvia,” Charlie frantically tells his friend Mac as the Oh Yeah song plays in the background. “This name keeps coming up over and over again, every day. Pepe’s mail is getting sent back to me. Pepe Silvia, Pepe Silvia.”

Charlie becomes obsessed with identifying Pepe Silvia. Throughout the scene, Charlie feels he has cracked the case.

However, Charlie concludes that there is no Pepe Silvia.

Like Charlie, I have recently seen a name repeatedly in my day-to-day life.

Kevin Durant.

I wake up in the morning and check Twitter. Bam! Kevin Durant talking to Anthony Edwards at the All-Star game.

Minutes later, another clip of Durant speaking after the Minnesota Timberwolves swept the Phoenix Suns in the first round last year.

“So impressed with Ant,” said Durant. “My favorite player to watch.”

For weeks, it seemed like at every turn, all I’d see was Durant.

“I get to play alongside my favorite player,” Ant told a shaky camera over the summer, “which is Kevin Durant.”

The amount of Durant content and speculation reached a fever pitch after John Krawczynski confirmed that the Wolves tried to trade for Durant at the trade deadline and that Durant was open to coming to Minnesota.

Durant has become my Pepe Silva. However, while Charlie finds that Silvia doesn’t exist, the further I went down the Durant rabbit hole, the more Durant-to-Minnesota looked like reality.

First, we must understand how a deal like this could come together.

1. Durant wants to come to Minnesota.

Given his praise of Edwards, Krawczynski’s reporting, and his relationship with Edwards, we can assume he would be open to playing in the Twin Cities.

2. Phoenix is open to moving Durant.

This premise is a little harder to prove. The Suns were reportedly looking to trade Durant at the deadline. However, understanding why helps clarify how it could make sense for the Wolves.

The new CBA’s second apron is Phoenix’s primary motivator for trading Durant. This season, the Suns blew past the second apron and have the league’s second-most expensive roster despite battling for a playoff spot.

Being in the second apron restricts roster building, especially for a middle-of-the-pack team like the Suns. The second apron prevents combining players to send out on a trade, prevents acquiring sign-and-trade players, restricts free-agent signings to nothing above the minimum, and makes changing a team’s makeup nearly impossible.

These penalties worsen if a team is in the second apron three times in five years. In seven years, their first-round pick becomes frozen, and the league moves it to the end of the first round. That continues until they have been out of the second apron for three consecutive seasons.

With the new CBA, if the Suns continue to be in the second apron, all of their first-round picks will move to the end of the first round and become untradeable starting in 2032. For context, that would be Devin Booker‘s age-35 season.

If the Suns are in the second apron for two of the next four seasons, the twilight Booker teams would be decimated when trying to rebuild. They could not trade picks and have end-of-the-first-round picks despite their record. That’s looking like the case for Phoenix. As constructed, between Durant, Booker, and Bradley Beal, they have just over $161 million in salary next season.

With those three players alone, the Suns are $7 million over the projected salary cap. Add in Grayson Allen and Royce O’Neale, and the Suns are at $187 million in salary. That puts them $8 million under the first apron and $20 million under the second, with only five players on their roster.

The Suns would have to sign near minimum players to round out their roster while forfeiting the rights to all their free agents. Players with two or fewer years of NBA experience can be signed to contracts of $1.15 and $2.08 million, depending on playing time.

Those are the caliber of players Phoenix must sign to stay under the apron. If the Suns chose to sign an MLE player at $8 million and round out the roster with vet minimum players at $3 million per player, they would balloon into the second apron for a second season.

That would give Phoenix only one more year to run an expensive team before the league would freeze the first-round picks and move them to the back. The second apron would also constrict roster building during the year.

That’s why it would behoove the Suns to trade Durant. Theoretically, the move would be to free up space, not retool or acquire expensive assets. Instead, it would be to shed cap, sign a full MLE player, and build a roster around Booker.

Phoenix only has Durant signed for 2025-26, which would help the Suns in the longer term if they were willing to accept next year as a lost season. However, the Wolves have Julius Randle’s contract and abundant young talent. That could be attractive to Phoenix, especially given Randles’s salary can come off the books in the summer of 2026-27, just like Durant’s.

After the new league year, the Wolves drop below the second apron due to Rudy Gobert’s extension, the NBA’s rising cap, and expiring contracts like Naz Reid and Nickeil Alexander-Walker.

If Randle opted into his player option, there would be a period of time where they would have roughly $29 million in salary space under the second apron and $17 million under the first. Dropping under the second apron allows them to take back 25 percent more salary in a trade.

A trade theoretically could look like this:

• Kevin Durant ($54,708,609) for one year.

For

• Julius Rande $29,462,400 on a one-year deal.
• Detroit’s 1st round pick, $4 million estimated non-lottery.

That would be the base of the deal. The next part would depend on how badly the Wolves want Durant or what the negotiations look like.

For example, they could trade:

• Donte DiVincenzo
  • $11.99 million salary be slated into the deal. The Suns would shed $10 million in salary, and the Wolves can absorb the extra money. Phoenix acquires Randle, a draft pick, and a starting caliber player while giving them more room to fill the roster.
    
• Rob Dillingham
  • $6.58 million in salary gives the near exact money requirements to pull off the trade. It would give the Suns Randle, two young draft prospects, and Dillingham to retool.
• Mike Conley
  • $10.77 million makes the salary work. However, Conley is not an asset like DiVincenzo or Dillingham. 

Minnesota can’t include any other player in this trade because the Suns would obtain too much salary, thus compounding their already difficult salary position, or the player doesn’t make enough to satisfy the 125% money return requirement.

The money requirement is somewhat easy to work around by adding a third team, a la adding Keita Bates-Diop into the Karl-Anthony Towns trade last summer.

In all likelihood, the deal will hinge on Minnesota’s willingness to give up an asset like Dillingham and just how desperately the Suns are to get out of their current salary cap situation. The wild card in this situation is Pepe Silvia (Kevin Durant).

If he really wants to come to Minnesota, superstar-caliber players have a way of forcing organizations’ hands. In 2019, Durant had his eyes set on Brooklyn and forced the Golden State Warriors to sign and trade him along with a first-round pick for D’Angelo Russell. (The Wolves picked up Treveon Graham and Shabazz Napier in the deal). Four years later, Durant convinced the Suns to trade four first-round picks, Mikal Bridges, Cam Johnson, and Jae Crowder to the Brooklyn Nets to land him.

That’s where the power lies in this potential trade. It’s also important to see the social media posts tying strings to push pins in the conspiracy board. Nothing in the NBA gets leaked or posted without a reason. If the reason for the Durant smoke is to get him to Minnesota, it could be much more based in reality than Charlie Day’s Pepe Silvia.