Hiring Scott Brooks doesn’t mean Wizards will land Kevin Durant

Just because the Washington Wizards have hired Scott Brooks, doesn’t mean the franchise will land Kevin Durant.

When it comes to landing the best players in basketball, it’s all about preemptive strikes and an organization planting the seeds to put themselves in position to acquiesce a star. On Thursday, the Washington Wizards made the first move in the summer chase of Oklahoma City Thunder forward Kevin Durant.

The Wizards hired former Thunder coach Scott Brooks to a five-year deal worth $35 million and by all accounts, it’s the Wizards’ making their first move at attracting Durant back home. By all accounts, Durant loved Brooks when he was the coach of the Thunder and the two share a close bond.

Despite the fact that the move seems to make sense for the Wizards, it doesn’t mean that they are going to land Durant in the summer. First off, is the matter of Durant leaving Oklahoma City, a place where has been an important member of the community, to go play for a Wizards team that has a great piece in John Wall, but plenty of other pieces on the roster that don’t necessarily mesh.

ESPN.com’s Royce Young also provided a valuable point. If Durant really wanted to play for Brooks so bad, the Thunder would have never fired him as their head coach to appease their star player.

Think about it for a second, if the Thunder knew that there was a realistic chance that Durant could leave them during free agency and Brooks was one of the pieces that could be used by teams to entice the star player to come play for their organization, then they would have never made the move to fire Brooks.

Durant is going to have his options in free agency, but the notion that Brooks is the reason he will end up in Washington is a fallible one.

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