The league sources have revealed to ESPN that Golden State Warriors star Kevin Durant will opt-out of his contract this summer and become an unrestricted agent. Durant signed a two-year contract with the team in the summer, which had player option clause for the 2018-19 season.
This, however, doesn’t mean that the 2017 NBA Finals MVP will look at other offers. Durant will reconstruct his deal with the Warriors, which saw him getting paid a lot less than he is worth. The 29-year-old accepted approximately $26 million per year, which is $10 million less than he would earn with a max-salary contract.
Thanks to this kind of approach from Kevin Durant, Golden State Warriors were able to retain some of their key bench players on the roster like point guard Shaun Livingston and forward Andre Iguodala.
“His gesture of taking less gave us the ability to be very aggressive in pursuing Shaun and Andre,” – explained Warriors’ general manager Bob Myers in July. “I can pretty much unequivocally say, without it, we’re not looking at the team we have right now. What Kevin did shows who he is, shows what he’s about, and I think it’s clear that that’s winning. Without him doing that it would have been a different roster, and clearly to me, a roster that wasn’t as good as the one we have right now.“
Kevin Durant joined the Golden State Warriors in the summer of 2016 in a widely controversial move. It turned out to be a good decision for Durant, since he won the NBA Championship in his first season with the team, and was also named the NBA Finals MVP. This season Durant is averaging 26.4 points, 6.8 rebounds, 5.1 assists and 1.8 blocks per game.
