The Rockets bailed out Matt Ishiba's reckless superstar chasing with the Kevin Durant Trade

a time to chill · Feb 12, 2026

...And now they're claiming the Rockets offered up Jabari Smith Jr in the Kevin Durant trade but held out until they got Dillon Brooks. We should've left KD in PHX.

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/70...enix-suns-rebuild/?source=user_shared_article

http://archive.today/qMPyy

Part about the Kevin Durant trade

When the dust finally settled on the 2025 trade deadline, and after so much speculation that he might be on the move, Durant was still in Phoenix. While Jones was still in the top front office spot at the time — he would later be named a Suns ‘adviser’ before leaving in July for a job as the head of basketball operations in the league office — – league sources say Bartelstein led the way in communications with teams that were interested in Durant. But the discussions had been held without any sort of direct involvement of Durant himself, which — after they learned that he wasn’t pleased with the prospect of a reunion — ultimately compelled the Golden State Warriors to back away from a deal. The Rockets, however, didn’t show any interest in Durant until the 11th hour.

“It was ‘No, no, no,’ (from Houston) until the day of the trade deadline last year, when (the Rockets) called me at 4 in the morning,” Bartelstein said. “(But) it wasn’t the right package. It wasn’t as good as the package we got. That was the really hard part for me and Mat at that time.”

More specifically, it was the fact the Rockets hadn’t offered Brooks that proved to be a deal-breaker. Per league sources, the offer included Houston big man Jabari Smith Jr. along with Green as the main players in the deal. As such, as Ishbia remembers it, they decided to revisit this scenario in the summer.

“The deal was never gonna get done without Jalen and Dillon in the deal,” he said. “Those are the two players we wanted. It wasn’t, ‘Hey, how do we fill a salary with these numbers?’ It was, ‘In order to have Kevin Durant on your team, I want Dillon Brooks to help me with my culture and my identity. I want Jalen Green as a 23-year-old up-and-coming leading scorer. You’re gonna get a Hall of Fame player. And then we obviously negotiate draft picks involved with it as well. But Dilllon Brooks was targeted, just like Jalen Green was targeted. …The Kevin Durant trade turned out to be everything we wanted it to be — and then some.”

A Rockets source refutes that Smith Jr. was in Houston’s offer.

To this point, this part of the plan has worked wonders. While Green (six games played) has faced injuries (hamstring, hip) that delayed his Suns start until recently, Brooks has fast become a complementary co-star to Booker and the very definition of a fan favorite. He’s averaging a career-high 21.1 points per game — second on the Suns behind Booker’s 25.3 — and providing a level of defensive intensity that has everything to do with Phoenix ranking eighth in the league on that end of the floor (they were 27th last season). While Brooks never knew Ishbia before the trade, he had been told that the Suns refused to do the deal without him in it.

“That just gave me more confidence,” he said. “And I knew I was getting traded to a team that needed some flair, some physicality, some motivation. The whole summer, I was working on my offensive game. So even though (the Suns) thought I was just gonna bring defensive spirit, I knew I had a little more in the tank. I feel like I was the right guy for the job.”

The guy who was deemed the wrong fit for the job, meanwhile, made his strong feelings about his exit known back on Jan. 5. Not long after Durant hit a game-winner to beat the Suns in Houston, the 37-year-old future Hall of Famer shared his view that he was “scapegoated” by the Suns on his way out.

“What Kevin thinks about his time here is fine,” Ishbia said. “We weren’t successful. And guess what? When things don’t go well, I’m going to make changes to get it to go well — by any means necessary.

“We’re focused on our guys now. I love our team. I love Dillon Brooks, Jalen Green, Khaman (Maluach, who was taken with the 10th pick) and Rasheer (Fleming, at No. 31), who we got in place of Kevin. Of course I love Booker and our team and our coach. So I’m just focused on us. I’m really not focused on what happened last year anymore, because we turned that page. I know how it went. I know every detail of how it went, and now I know what we’re gonna do going forward. So how Kevin feels about that, that’s his own problem, and his own thoughts.”
Click to expand...

StephenAdams · Feb 12, 2026

Realistically that team with jalen green and dillon brooks wasnt going anywhere. The correct move was to sell high on all our flawed young players and really go all in this year

Forums

The Rockets bailed out Matt Ishiba's reckless superstar chasing with the Kevin Durant Trade

a time to chill Member

StephenAdams Member

Share This Page

About ClutchFans

Rockets Content

Support ClutchFans!