LAS VEGAS — The uncertain status of Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving is hanging over the Nets’ offseason, with a chance both disgruntled stars could somehow still be with the team when training camp starts. But the young players on the roster don’t seem to be holding their breath.
The Nets are getting ready to tip off Las Vegas Summer League on Friday against the Bucks, with Durant’s trade demand dominating every headline. Talk to the young Nets who played with Durant and Irving last season, and they project more of an air of resignation to reality than any hope of running it back.
“Yeah, they were very helpful for me during the season. So whether I’m with them or not going forward, I think I’ll always remember the stuff that they taught me in my first year, and what all the vets told me,” Kessler Edwards said after practice Thursday. “So I’m glad I got to experience that in my first year. I’ll always keep that stuff with me.”
Edwards had said on Chris Carrino’s midweek podcast, “Voice of the Nets,” that both Durant and Irving had given him pregame pep talks that buoyed his confidence, and the second-year pro acknowledged that he might not have that feeling again.
“Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, those guys [gave me] a lot of confidence and they talked to me a lot before the games,” Edwards said on the podcast. “That’s a feeling I’ll probably never get again.”
Durant has kept a low profile since demanding a trade a week ago. The drama has held up free agency, dominating the back pages and airwaves and news cycle. But apparently not the day-to-day chatter of the Nets’ summer league roster.
“Yeah I’m just watching everything, too. We don’t really talk about it; just wait and see what happens,” Edwards said. “Just focused on this summer league.”
Perhaps more than any other Net, Cam Thomas — who led the summer league in scoring last year as a rookie to earn co-MVP honors — was taken under Durant’s wing. Underneath their humorous trash-talking was a mentor-mentee relationship, in which Durant and Irving took the offensively gifted guard under their respective wings.
Now Thomas seems fully aware he’s going to have to leave the nest. Or more accurately, the nest may be leaving him.
“Yeah, just him and Kyrie really, I connected with those two a lot. So those two are my brothers no matter what happens. I still call them or text them on something,” Thomas said. “So you know, it is what it is. It’s part of the business. Hopefully everything works out in our favor. But you’ve just got to move on with life. It is what it is.”
But the bigger question is: Have Durant or Irving been texting him back?
Yahoo Sports and TNT sideline reporter Chris Haynes said on his “Posted Up” podcast that Durant had “gone dark,” not responding to other NBA stars who had been reaching out to him in the past week to touch base and gauge his interest in being traded to their teams.
In essence, Durant has largely gone underground.
“I texted him last week; that’s the last time I talked to him,” Thomas said. “I haven’t talked to him since, though.”
Adam Caporn — who was the Long Island Nets’ head coach and is being elevated to an assistant spot on Steve Nash’s staff — is coaching the Nets in the summer league. He said he hasn’t talked to his young players about the Durant-Irving melodrama, and claimed he has no intention of doing so.
While the entire NBA world is checking their alerts, watching the ticker on ESPN and hanging on every scrap of news, Thomas insisted he isn’t.
“No. But I mean, it is what it is. It’s part of the business,” Thomas said. “They have their decisions, they’ll make them. But I’m just focusing on summer league at this point.”
