Kevin Durant to Memphis? An early summer basketball parlor game is back for another round. 

The Grizzlies have bobbed around the fringes of trade speculation since news broke in late June of 33-year-old former MVP Durant seeking a trade from the Brooklyn Nets. 

But this week might mark the first — or at least most meaningful — instance of the Grizzlies appearing in Durant trade reportage. 

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On Monday morning, the Athletic’s Shams Charania, in checking in on the ongoing Durant saga, mentioned nine teams as active Durant suitors, but made a particular flourish of adding the Grizzlies to the end of the list, noting that the team’s leadership “so far” (my emphasis) “do not appear inclined” to include Jaren Jackson Jr. or Desmond Bane in an offer. 

There’s a difference between unlikely and fantastical, and if the Grizzlies still remain an unlikely destination for Durant, they’ve never been a fantastical one. 

Given their precocious place in the league’s competitive pecking order, deep roster, and surplus of future draft picks, the Grizzlies were always a viable candidate to make a pitch for Durant. 

Being a realistic landing spot for one of the game’s biggest stars is alone uncharted territory for the franchise. It’s dream fuel. It’s also a perhaps too prescient reminder of how dreams can be dashed: A Nets team constructed to win titles with Durant instead likely to be demolished in two seasons, without even a conference finals to show for it. 

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The lesson: Proceed with caution. 

But as the Durant impasse has lingered, the Grizzlies have become at least somewhat more viable. What to make of it? Let’s work through some of the angles. 

Why does this seem to be a more serious proposition now?

From the outset, the Grizzlies have been well-positioned to construct offers for Durant that would still leave the team with enough talent to still compete. But that’s actually become less true than earlier this summer. 

Jackson’s foot fracture — news revealed about an hour after Durant’s trade demand on June 30 — made him a somewhat less attractive potential centerpiece. This summer’s subsequent draft subtracted two first-round picks from the team’s store of trade assets. And the flexibility of using free agents Tyus Jones or Kyle Anderson in sign-and-trade deals is now gone. 

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But if the Grizzlies’ trade assets have actually declined since the first news of Durant’s availability, the report this week suggests that the potential asking price has perhaps declined more. 

At the outset, the public position of the Nets was that a Durant deal would require a young All-Star-level player (or two) and a boatload of draft picks. They wanted present and future value. Everything, all at once. 

The Grizzlies, everyone knows, aren’t trading Ja Morant. 

Absent that, other rumored potential deals — a Deandre Ayton/Mikal Bridges combo from Phoenix, reigning rookie of the year Scottie Barnes from Toronto, Brandon Ingram from New Orleans, Jaylen Brown from Boston, all paired with multiple future first-round picks — would trump the Grizzlies in the “young star” department, especially given Jackson’s injury question.

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Two months later, none of those deals has materialized, the Durant situation in Brooklyn has gotten messier, and the notion that the Nets will get what they consider full value for the former MVP has faded. 

That fade has brought more potential teams into the mix. The market seems to have lowered, and as a result expanded. Enter the Grizzlies. 

What might a trade under these parameters look like?

Holding Jackson, in particular, out of a Durant deal presents two complications: Matching salary while also providing enough value. 

Still, the Grizzlies can get there on the first part. And there’s a key bit of timing here that may or may not be connected to Monday’s reporting: Aug. 23 is the date when trade restrictions lift on Danny Green, the veteran forward the Grizzlies acquired on draft night. Until that date, Green could not be traded alongside other players, and aggregating Green’s salary is now perhaps key to constructing an offer. 

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With both teams operating over the league’s salary cap, salaries exchanged in a deal have to be within 125% of each other. A combination of Steven Adams ($17.1 million, expiring), Dillon Brooks ($11.4 million, expiring), and Green ($10 million, expiring, if fully guaranteed) is $39.3 million, close enough to Durant’s $44.1 million to be the salary foundation of a workable deal.

From that point, other players could be added around the fringes, though the math remains tight. For instance, if the Grizzlies added rising second-year wing Ziaire Williams ($4.5 million) for future value, while taking back veteran wing Royce O’Neale ($9.2 million) to help replace Brooks’ lost defense, the deal would just barely work. (O’Neale has the same trade restriction as Green, lifting on Aug. 29.)

The value still doesn’t seem right for the Nets, and that’s where draft picks come in. 

Under NBA trade rules, which prohibit trading first-round picks in consecutive years and also limit how far into the future picks can be dealt, the Grizzlies could include up to five first-round picks. (Their own in 2023, 2025, 2027, 2029 and the Warriors’ pick in 2024.)

Is that a deal the Nets do? Not if their first priority is adding a young player of demonstrated All-Star ability and if they can still get that elsewhere. 

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Because the Nets traded so many of their own future picks to acquire James Harden (since traded again to Philadelphia), the general NBA sense has been that Brooklyn prefers a trade that positions them for both the present and future. That they are not looking for a blow-it-up-and-rebuild-from-scratch deal. 

Brooklyn changing course and accepting the kind of expiring contract/draft pick package that starts a full-scale rebuild would be the only way this kind of Grizzlies offer truly becomes viable. Even then, it might not be the best offer of its type.

Should the Grizzlies be willing to include Jackson or Bane?

Again, note the “for now” language in the report of the Grizzlies not including Jackson or Bane in offers. 

In the context of what seems to be a lower market, adding either — much less both — could suddenly make the Grizzlies look very viable.

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Would it be worthwhile for the Grizzlies to shift beyond their current public bargaining position? 

There’s risk here. The Grizzlies’ have preached sustainable success, and a Morant-Bane-Jackson core feels like one that can compete together for the next decade. 

Durant will be 34 years old when next season begins, has a ruptured Achilles’ tendon on his injury history, has played a total of 90 regular season games over the past three seasons, and has now become unhappy with every team he’s been on. 

This includes a Golden State Warriors team on which he won multiple titles and a handpicked Brooklyn team that gave him the head coach and All-Star teammates of his choosing. 

For a team in such a good place competitively, with such a palpably strong culture, adding Durant is risky even if Bane and Jackson are kept out of the deal. If either is included? The risk rises exponentially.

And yet, when he played last season, Durant still might have been the best player in the game. His size and skill and feel will age well. LeBron James and Chris Paul — neither shooters of Durant’s caliber — are still elite players at age 37, or were last season.

And there’s this: Many think that Morant’s style — predicated on athleticism, with questions about shooting and durability — could lead to both a nearer peak and shorter prime than other top talents of his age. If so, the next four years — the length of Durant’s contract — could be the best window. Can Durant hold up — and hold his value — for the length of it?

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Including Jackson or Bane complicates the decision, of course. Longterm, I’d argue that, with Durant in the fold, Jackson’s defense is more valuable than Bane’s shooting. And while Jackson’s contract is larger now, he’s locked up long-term on a declining structure. Who knows what the coming Bane deal will bring?

Broadly, I’d be more willing to deal Bane. 

But that short-term contract difference changes the parameters of a potential trade. Bane’s $2.1 million wouldn’t do much to help match salary. Perhaps adding him lets you keep Williams and Clarke both, but Brooks and Adams still need to go. 

By contrast, Jackson’s $28.9 million this season essentially matches Adams and Brooks combined. Jackson and Green alone could be the salary foundation of a Durant trade, allowing the team to keep both Adams and Brooks. 

If the driving goal is to maximize title odds for this season alone — and if you’re trading for Durant, perhaps that should be the stance — then trading Jackson, already slated to miss a big chunk of the season, might be the way to go.

A starting lineup of Morant-Bane-Brooks-Durant-Adams, with Jones and Clarke still anchoring the bench? If Durant is his best self, a strong title contender.

The bottom line: Durant is also a party to the deal

Is that short-term title boost worth the long-term cost and the immediate risk of poisoning the culture and chemistry?

There’s a degree to which this is a basketball-fandom personality quiz. Making the trade without Bane or Jackson — very unlikely — yields a yes from this more long-term, less title-or-bust basketball fan. Including Jackson or Bane — still unlikely but less so — probably a reluctant no.

Ultimately, a deal that brings Durant to Memphis requires three things: The price coming down, a willingness to take on risk, and Durant’s assent. 

If evidence suggests the price has lowered, it’s not clear that, for the Grizzlies, the price/risk factors have reached balance. 

And while maybe the Durant market has shifted, it remains governed by the same fundamental question: Which team, among those Durant will accept, will make the best offer?

With four years left on his contract, one might scoff at the notion that Durant’s acceptance matters. But if Durant can cause this much of a stir in a major market he hand-picked, even with four years left on his contract, there’s no reason to think it won’t be a major problem for one he’s dealt to reluctantly. 

The reality is, Durant will have some control over the final resolution.

There’s a case to be made for Memphis: Durant could win big alongside Morant, and do so in a way that gets him the kind of credit that eluded him with Golden State. He could do so for an organization that currently seems to have a very strong reputation among players (unless you’re Andre Iguodala).

One can imagine the Grizzlies making a strong pitch to Durant. But, to this point, there’s been reporting about markets Durant would embrace (Phoenix, Miami) and Memphis hasn’t been on that list. 

In the absence of something more tangible, the default has to be skepticism.