Bickley Blast: How Suns at Nets could be the night Kevin Durant truly belongs to Phoenix fans

Bickley Blast: How Suns at Nets could be the night Kevin Durant truly belongs to Phoenix fans

And marada boings Arizona Sports the local sports leader bigley blast in less than 11 hours Kevin Durant will make his return to Brooklyn and nobody and I mean nobody knows what it’s going to sound like will they cheer out of respect for a Hall of Fame Talent or will they Jer

Out of lingering anger for a failed super team and the trade requests that exceeded the Playoff Series victories he delivered to New York nobody knows including Durant because it’s complicated just like my feelings on the matter part of me wants the Brooklyn crowd to recognize that Durant wasn’t

The cancer or the core issue on that failed super team and part of me wants exactly the opposite because the more Brooklyn booze the more Phoenix will rally around KD and the more he becomes ours and that matters because a Community has to deeply care about a

Sports team in order to make the journey significant to make the journey transcended to make it what it should be it’s why so many fans locally want no part of Miles Bridges they don’t want to win a championship that way with hints of desperation and contempt they want a

Team they truly love and more than halfway through the regular season these suns have yet to truly capture our hearts not the way it should be after 56 years of waiting all right today’s Bickle blast brought to you by my great friends at Chapman BMW who make luxury attainable

You can always shop online at Chapman bmw.com it’s it is an interesting dilemma and even talking to Brian Lewis who’s going to be in the building tonight covering that game for the New York Post he doesn’t know what to expect and he’s a guy with has his finger on

The pulse of Nets fan like like nobody else and I think you have to start with you know in terms of fan reaction we know the Nets have been on record and say they want to do this video tribute and from what I’ve been able to gather

They’re doing it you said you talk to Frank Frank say they’re doing it he says they’re doing it now that was yesterday now again who knows Kevin Durant still got people in the organization that like him and trust him and he might say really honestly please don’t do this cuz

If you do it you’re going to ask for a reaction One Way or Another but from a fans I mean there’s going to be reaction regardless just from his presence and him being in uniform on that Court in a different uniform but you have to from a

Fan standpoint it started with two trade requests MH and I would totally understand and I can say it now as a fan of Kevin Durant and rooting for him to do well in Phoenix you know these these video tribute let’s let’s look at the video tributes the Suns have done or the

The shout outs not all of them have been fullon video tributes um none of those players asked to be out of here so they all left on good terms now DeAndre says he asked for a trade but nobody believes him thank you for adhering to my request yeah they adhered to my request

I think that’s the way that he phrased it um so I get it Net’s fans were on the map they did have hope to win a championship for the first time in franchise history but it’s also New York they’re a little more sophisticated than that as a sports town they have got

Options they’re more cynical I I don’t think I don’t think Nets fans um just were were Star Struck by the fact that suddenly people were talking about their basketball doesn’t seem to me to be a New York kind of reaction they do have options and Nets fans opted they made

That conscious choice to be Nets fans so I I think that all gets thrown into the mix too and I you know then there’s the questions of Kevin Durant is is very aware uh of of situations I think he’s very self-aware which was not the reputation I thought he had coming to Phoenix

The fact that he says he doesn’t want this the Knight will be better without it you know agreeing with fans on social media that uh say he doesn’t deserve any any um recognition from from the Nets and I also think it’s interesting we didn’t get into this with Brian Lewis but in

His article on the New York Post you know the other two players of the big three Kyrie Irving has not been back yet he’s back there next week James Harden didn’t get any kind of recognition of he didn’t he I forgot about that and I wonder what

The reason was I mean he’s been on two teams since then uh you know was that something that was just shot down from from management it it’s all I think it’s a very interesting blend of things that are in play and I and I do think that I I think

The first trade request from Kevin Durant uh hit the team um and hit the fan base a lot harder than the second I think that by the time the second rolled around kind of everybody had recog reconciled that maybe we should do this and let’s do this and I I think I think

The Nets were very were thrilled with the hall they got out of it temporarily um so I I do agree with you I think there’s a lot of this stuff in the air tonight and nobody knows which way it’s going to go and it’ll be real curious to

See what effect if any it has on Kevin Durant because we all know KD is the guy that makes big shots he leans into Big Shots there’s no fear in him if you give him the basketball at the end of the game there is no fear that that he’s

Going to look for somebody to pass the ball to and and not all NBA stars are like that believe it or not well not all NBA players most stars are going to take that shot but there’s also part of KD that is that is uncomfortable being singled out from the group to that

Extent and and I I’m not sure how this thing is going to go and either does he but the fact that he doesn’t want it I think tells you exactly what his mindset is yeah he doesn’t want it I also think another thing that that Brian Lewis hit

On that is interesting to watch not only tonight but for the next eight days with the trade deadline next Thursday in the NBA the Brooklyn Nets have the opportunity to change the landscaped landscape of the league unlike a lot of teams at the deadline and and another

Thing that can’t really be Quantified is what their feeling is the Nets could do exactly what he talked about they could trade everybody and they could restock for for the future yeah um you know Toronto’s already started that process you see what that trade has done for the

New York they’re the hottest team in the NBA right now with OG anobi after he got traded SE yakums with Indiana they’re going to be a factor the Nets have the opportunity to to impact not only their own future but the rest of the league if

They go down that road yeah no listen and and I’m not sure that the the re most recent I read about that I I think that they’ve thought about that I I don’t think that that’s the way they’re going to go we’ll see I mean it’s that’s

The other factor in this now it’s it’s the the Nets since since the twins came to Phoenix the Nets have been through some stuff and so is male Bridges male Bridges um had had tapered off significantly offensively his shooting percentage plummeted for a while and

There were a lot of Nets fans who began trolling him about pass the ball M you that kind of stuff they’ve kind of got it all back together um at least to some extent and and so it’s it’s important for them to to not only uh you know Express themselves but it’s important

For the Nets now to kind of keep playing good basketball so I don’t know I’m I’m fascinated by this tonight and as I said in the blast I I I think that part and parcel of what is missing with this basketball team and they were getting

Close for a couple of games is building that relationship with fans here in the valley building a belief and building a faith and building a trust and building a love uh for this team it hasn’t been there yet this year I they they wanted it they wanted to be there but the

Team’s performances have been all over the the map the availability was a huge issue for a while that seems to no longer be an issue but again they need if for in my opinion this is something that would be really good for them to build on because you could do this all

The way to the postseason and maybe get lucky and go onto a postseason run I I don’t think that’s what fans here want and as I mentioned miles bridges in the blast I don’t think fans want that uh that path to a championship it’s my

Opinion h no I think right now that is certainly the standpoint is avoid that guy at all costs try to win a championship without him yeah and doesn’t mean the Suns aren’t going to go down that road though no no and and it it doesn’t mean two weeks from now Suns

Fans aren’t going to go man we really do need help let’s let’s do this thing I you don’t know you don’t know with this stuff you just mentioned it too the relationship of fans and team right now the love factor with that seven game winning streak when it was intact and it

Was rolling and you had a couple of unbelievable wins that were really entertaining the energy was back in that building it was growing look we’ve questioned it again you know how much was that diminished by not just losing because you know Suns fans are sophisticated enough to know that

Nothing’s guaranteed in the NBA but the the style of losses the losses at Indiana and Orlando weren’t just your run-of-the-mill losses they were again losses that poke the holes in could poke holes in in a fan base’s belief so I that’s why I think this game this game

Is Big tonight for a lot of reasons the Suns already had a seven game winning streak this year and it l to so fans might be a little hesitant uh Suns and Nets tonight 6:30 tip off here in Phoenix uh 8:30 in Brooklyn you can hear

It here on Arizona Sports on 987 and the Arizona Sports app thanks for watching Bley and marada click to see the latest Bley blast and hit the button in the middle to subscribe to Arizona Sports

How Brooklyn Nets fans will react to Kevin Durant’s return remains unknown, but Dan Bickley explains how Wednesday night’s game could be the night Phoenix Suns fans truly claim the superstar forward as their own.

Video: Felisa Cárdenas and Jeremy Schnell/Arizona Sports
Photo: Getty Images

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