Kevin Durant admits to thinking about ending his career. Will Phoenix Suns star and Team USA icon retire?
Having won everything there is to win on an individual and team level, one can’t ask more of Kevin Durant. Perhaps that’s why he’s thinking of retiring.
If there were any doubts about whether Kevin Durant still has it, his performances in the now-concluded Paris 2024 Olympics should have laid them to rest. With that said, one can’t deny that time waits for no man and that’s something one of basketball’s best understands all too well.
Kevin Durant is contemplating saying goodbye to the game
On Saturday night, Phoenix Suns star Kevin Durant helped his fellow countryman secure yet another gold medal in the men’s basketball segment of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. It marked Durant’s gold with Team USA and needless to say, is yet another reminder of how impressive his career has been as he prepares for his 17th season in the NBA. Indeed, at 35 years old Durant is by far one of the most successful players of his generation, and with that, he recently admitted that his mind has begun to turn toward the idea of bringing the curtain down.
“As I get older in the league and the league is getting younger, I tend to think about retirement more,” Durant said in an interview with TV One. “[Retirement] creeps in my mind for sure,” Durant continued. “I honestly don’t know what I’ll do [when I stop playing]. I have a lot of different interests. I definitely want to stay around the game. ...That’s gonna be a huge, huge transition. I’ve been at this since I was 8. It’s gonna be hopefully 30 years of me doing this where every day was centered around the game of basketball. It hasn’t been no other lifestyle but this.”
To be fair, one could argue that Durant can count himself lucky having not only played for so long but maintained a presence amongst the league’s elite as well. Consider for a moment that only three other players from his 2007 NBA Draft class remain active in the league: Al Horford, Mike Conley, and Jeff Green. That’s to say it’s been quite a journey since he was selected with the No. 2 overall pick by the now-defunct Seattle Supersonics almost two decades ago. So, are we about to see one of the modern era’s best players call time on a career that looks like it could garner more titles? To hear the 14-time All-Star tell it, that won’t be the case right here and now, but it’s not far off.
Where facts and figures are concerned, Durant is on the roster of the Phoenix Suns where he has two more fully guaranteed years left. In 2026, he will become an unrestricted free agent and to that end, it would be a choice between putting pen to paper on an extension ahead of said contract’s end, or making a move in an effort to secure one last championship ring. How that shakes out, we can’t say but what we can do is go with the words of the man himself who has seemingly suggested that he’s simply focused on the present and nothing more. “Right now I would say yes, but that’s just a figure of speech, I can’t know what’s going to happen,” Durant told ESPN. “I love playing in Phoenix, I love our fans, I love the city. ...I realized what our mission is by being in the Valley and I realized how much these people care about their team. I started to understand the history of the Phoenix Suns and I am happy to be a part of it. One day, I would like to receive the franchise’s Ring of Honor.”