The Athletic NBA Daily
Jimmy Butler, Kevin Durant, De'Andre Hunter and the Trade Deadline
06 Feb 2025
Dave DuFour, Zena Keita, and Sam Amick react to the Jimmy Butler trade, what happened with Kevin Durant, De'Andre Hunter to the Cavs and more. Then break down the rest of the trade deadline including what did, and did not happen.Host: Dave DuFourWith: Zena Keita & Sam AmickExecutive Producer: Andrew SchlechtAudio Producer: Grayson Moody Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Full Episode
Welcome to the NBA Daily. It's trade deadline day. So we got Sam Amick to break down all the big moves from the last 24 hours and the fallout ramifications. Good morning, everybody. Good morning, Zena. Good morning, Sam. Although it's afternoon, let me not pretend like we're not talking right after the trade deadline. This is probably going to go out pretty fast. This is an emergency podcast.
We just finished the live stream. If you caught us there, thanks for hanging out with us all day. It was a pretty good time. Sam, I know you're the busiest guy on the planet right now, so let's jump right in. Jimmy Butler, he's now a warrior. We thought he was going to go to Phoenix. That didn't work out. How did this happen?
Guys, thanks for having me. I think you're as busy as I am. I just saw you on the live stream and now you're on the pod. So appreciate you joining me here. I mean, listen, it's funny if you go back a couple of weeks on the Jimmy Butler front. Myself, Marcus Thompson, Anthony Slater had detailed in a story how the Warriors. seemingly did not have interest in Jimmy Butler.
And we had information and insight from top to bottom. You're talking ownership, front office players. There were certainly people in the building who thought it might be a good idea, but really in Warriors world, as Zena knows really well, where the prominent voices there matter so much.
The early signaling was we do need help, but it was so messy in Miami with Jimmy, there was some reservation about him being the perfect guy. Now fast forward to the trade deadline getting closer and closer, the Warriors' pursuit of Kevin Durant and that possible reunion that honestly two nights ago I went to bed thinking, man, I think this is going to happen.
And that obviously played a big part here. It showed a couple of things. It showed the level of desperation with the Warriors because they knew at that time that Kevin wasn't going to be thrilled about coming back. Now, they were willing to do the deal with a certain level of discomfort. And as we reported yesterday, I think it was, the Suns had interest in Draymond, for example.
And there were some folks talking about how, man, would the Warriors think about – maybe even moving Draymond to relieve pressure from those dynamics to make Kevin more comfortable to come to the Warriors. That's the kind of stuff they were looking at.
But when Kevin decided clearly to broadcast the level of disinterest and discontent that would be there if he went to the Warriors, that was a game changer because the level of uncomfortableness went up for the Warriors. They had to then figure out, okay –
That option that had all that history and basketball-wise, obviously, you would just put Kevin right in and get back to doing what they did a few years ago. That's off the table. Then they turned to Jimmy. And really, it's, I think, a win-win for both sides. I still think Jimmy Butler is one of the best players on the planet. Take all the drama away.
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