West Notes: Suns, Kevin Durant, Warriors, Pelicans

Suns

All-Star forward Kevin Durant has played for four teams — the Thunder, Warriors, Nets and now Suns — and all of it is by Durant’s doing.

He has either signed elsewhere as a free agent or requested a trade in each stop, and some around the NBA believe he suffers from chronic dissatisfaction. Durant does indeed have two championship rings, but both were with the Warriors, who won two one before him and another after.

“[Durant] for sure looks around,” an Eastern Conference exec told Howard Beck of The Ringer. “Durant always has a wandering eye.”

Will Durant look to move on from the star-studded Suns next? Our Ashish Mathur has the full story here.

• Durant said he thinks he, LeBron James and Stephen Curry can play into their 40s, as we relayed here. Durant turns 36 in September.
• Shooting guard Bradley Beal underwent a procedure on his broken nose, as Mathur relayed here. Beal suffered the injury on Jan. 26 and then played nine games with a protective mask.

Warriors

For the record, Curry, 35, said he’s “not close” to retiring, as Mathur wrote here.

“How I approach anything is how I approach everything,” Curry told Michael Lee of The Washington Post. “So there’s a reverence and a respect for what that responsibility comes with. The business of basketball gets to you every once in a while. All the hard work is stuff you do in the weight room and recovery and strength and conditioning. The mental stuff. And then you get on the court, it’s fun. It’s kind of an automatic trigger. It’s not every night you hit that 10 out of 10 in the joy, but it’s pretty close.”

• Forward Draymond Green reportedly told the Warriors’ front office not to trade fellow forward Jonathan Kuminga to the Lakers in a deal for James. We have that full story here.
• Golden State’s attempts to trade for LeBron weren’t supposed to leak, as Mathur wrote here.

Pelicans

Former Warriors GM and current ESPN analyst Bob Myers said he believes the Pelicans are a lot like the Knicks, via Christian Clark of NOLA.com.

“I think the Knicks are the Pelicans of the East,” Myers said. “Very deep. A lot of good players. Lacking greatness.”

Interestingly, the Pelicans and Knicks share a 33-22 record entering the post-break portion of the season.

“Those two teams are the deepest teams,” Myers said. “When you get to the playoffs, it’s not about the ninth or 10th guy. When the Warriors were winning championships, you know what our bench scoring was? Twenty-seventh in the league; 28th in the league; 29th. You know who scored? The guy making $40 million. The guy making $30 million.”

• We have more notes out of New Orleans right here and all the time on our Pelicans page.