{"id":119936,"date":"2025-06-24T02:47:30","date_gmt":"2025-06-24T02:47:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/119936\/"},"modified":"2025-06-24T02:47:30","modified_gmt":"2025-06-24T02:47:30","slug":"timberwolves-reason-for-passing-kevin-durant-trade-revolves-around-julius-randle-rudy-gobert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/119936\/","title":{"rendered":"Timberwolves’ Reason for Passing Kevin Durant Trade Revolves Around Julius Randle, Rudy Gobert"},"content":{"rendered":"

Timberwolves’ Reason for Passing Kevin Durant Trade Revolves Around Julius Randle, Rudy Gobert<\/a> originally appeared on Athlon Sports<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Minnesota Timberwolves were interested in trading for Kevin Durant, but the NBA legend didn’t want to play for the Timberwolves.<\/p>\n

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At this time, it’s unknown why Durant didn’t want to get traded to Minnesota.\u00a0Durant and Anthony Edwards are tight friends. They were teammates last summer on Team USA, and Durant is Edwards\u2019 favorite basketball player.<\/p>\n

However, Durant wanted to be traded to the Houston Rockets, San Antonio Spurs or Miami Heat, and he got his wish, as the Rockets have agreed to acquire the 15-time All-Star from the Phoenix Suns.<\/p>\n

The Timberwolves and the Suns discussed a trade involving\u00a0Durant, according to Michael Scotto of HoopsHype<\/a>. Phoenix wanted Rudy Gobert, but Minnesota didn’t want to part ways with its center.<\/p>\n

\"Anthony<\/p>\n

Anthony Edwards and Kevin Durant won’t be teammates next season. Credit&colon; Joe Camporeale-Imagn Images<\/p>\n

The Timberwolves\u00a0also didn\u2019t see Durant and Julius Randle as an ideal pairing defensively.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe Timberwolves were concerned about trading for Durant when Minnesota wasn\u2019t on his preferred list of destinations,\u201d Scotto wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn addition, the Suns desired Rudy Gobert in trade talks, and losing their French defensive anchor to pair Julius Randle and Kevin Durant in the frontcourt together wasn\u2019t seen as an ideal pairing defensively, HoopsHype has learned.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Timberwolves have qualified for the conference finals twice in a row. They lost to the Dallas Mavericks\u00a0in five games\u00a0last year\u00a0and\u00a0fell to the Oklahoma City Thunder\u00a0in five games\u00a0this year.<\/p>\n

Durant won four scoring titles and the 2014 MVP Award with the Thunder and back-to-back rings and Finals MVPs with the Golden State Warriors in 2017 and 2018.<\/p>\n

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However, the future Hall of Famer hasn\u2019t gotten past the second round of the playoffs since leaving Golden State in 2019.<\/p>\n

Edwards and the Timberwolves swept\u00a0Durant and the Suns\u00a0in the first round of the 2024 playoffs.<\/p>\n

Related: Key Person Reportedly Encouraged Rockets to Trade for Kevin Durant<\/a><\/p>\n

This story was originally reported by Athlon Sports<\/a> on Jun 23, 2025, where it first appeared.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Timberwolves’ Reason for Passing Kevin Durant Trade Revolves Around Julius Randle, Rudy Gobert originally appeared on Athlon Sports.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":119937,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3782],"tags":[375,7,149,164,12780,194,376,938,189,7057,307,152,3954,6,179,472,373,474,308],"class_list":{"0":"post-119936","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-minnesota-timberwolves","8":"tag-anthony-edwards","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-dallas-mavericks","11":"tag-golden-state-warriors","12":"tag-hoopshype","13":"tag-houston-rockets","14":"tag-julius-randle","15":"tag-kevin-durant","16":"tag-miami-heat","17":"tag-michael-scotto","18":"tag-minnesota","19":"tag-minnesota-timberwolves","20":"tag-minnesotatimberwolves","21":"tag-nba","22":"tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","23":"tag-phoenix-suns","24":"tag-rudy-gobert","25":"tag-san-antonio-spurs","26":"tag-timberwolves"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114736060848387954","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}