Houston, We Have a Kevin: Rockets Trade for KD Starts Offseason with a Bang

Oddball w/ Amin Elhassan & Izzy Gutierrez

Meadowlark Media

Basketball, Comedy, Sports

2.4 • 654 Ratings

🗓️ 24 June 2025

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kevin Durant was traded to the Houston Rockets. The Rockets have a lot of young guys, so if they do not win in this window, at least the window to win will be bigger. Jalen Green is not that guy right now, trading him was the right decision. The Miami Heat were finalists in the KD trade, but with Kel’el Ware and Nikola Jovic declared untouchables, was Miami really serious about this trade or were they appeasing their fan base? Plus, which teams in the East are going to see this season as a chance to go all in? Will Pistons be able to replicate OKC's success with Cade Cunningham instead of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander? The Hawks have Trae Young, but will he stay in Atlanta? The Milwaukee Bucks need a co-star for Giannis Antetokounmpo... should they go after Jalen Green? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Oddball. I'm Amino Hasson. That's Izzy Gutierrez. Today's word of the day is penultimacy.
0:14.0	Look it up, kids. And because we care about the finals, even though nobody else seems to care about the finals. We didn't talk about
0:22.3	the big trade that happened on the day of game seven, which is Kevin Durant getting traded to
0:28.2	the Houston Rockets. The Rockets gave up Jalen Green, Dylan Brooks, the 2025 top 10 pick that was
0:37.0	actually Phoenix's to begin with, and five second
0:40.9	round picks. This was according to Shams Rania of ESPN. Izzy Gutierrez, was this a good move for the
0:47.8	Rockets? Got it. I thought you'd ask for just spell penultimacy, whatever the hell you said. Do I think
0:53.8	this was a good move for the Rockets?
0:55.8	Man, I was hoping for this move. I was hoping for this move as a Rockets fan. I think everybody
1:00.9	knows that, right? Okay. As a Rockets fan who was sort of over Jalen Green before the season
1:09.3	started. Like, I thought he was a nice player. I thought he would be a good
1:13.7	piece on a team that's loaded, but he can't be a team that on a team that relies on him as much as
1:19.3	Houston did. Like, they needed him in the half court. They needed him to close out games, and he just
1:23.4	wasn't doing it. And so I think if you're talking about being able to keep your core, which is
1:28.8	effectively what, Alper and Shangun, Jabbar Smith, a man Thompson, I mean, maybe throw Fred Van
1:33.7	Bleet as your vet core guy. If you can keep all that and add Kevin Durant and still keep some
1:38.9	of your young pieces, Tari East and Cam Whitmore. I mean, this is a no-brainer. This is the type of deal
1:43.6	that they basically
1:45.8	create a short window two or three years. But if they don't win in that championship, okay,
1:50.5	sorry, KD, but the rest of them can still win. The rest of them are still young enough to keep going
1:54.5	and try to build another, you know, championship window around with another star in there. So I think it was absolutely a home run for the
2:03.0	Rockets. And they had the movable pieces. So for them to not do something like this, I thought
	...

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