The Miami Heat again pursued future Hall of Famer Kevin Durant, but the Heat again missed out on the 15-time All-Star forward.
The Phoenix Suns are trading Durant to the Houston Rockets, ESPN’s Shams Charania reported on Sunday afternoon. The Rockets are sending Jalen Green, Dillon Brooks, the No. 10 overall pick in this year’s NBA Draft and five second-round picks to the Suns to land Durant, according to ESPN.
The Heat was among the teams that engaged the Suns on a potential trade for Durant after being eliminated in the first round of the playoffs in each of the last two seasons. But Miami was only willing to go so far in what players and picks it included in its offer for Durant at this stage of his career, as he’ll turn 37 years old on Sept. 29.
The Heat improved its initial offer for Durant and that offer received serious consideration, according to a source close to the situation. But in the end, the Suns chose to take the Rockets’ offer.
This marked at least the fourth time that Miami has attempted to add Durant to its roster over the past decade. The Heat tried to land Durant in free agency during the 2016 offseason (he ended up signing with the Golden State Warriors), then tried to acquire him in 2022 (when he requested a trade from the Brooklyn Nets and then ended up being traded to the Suns), and then made an offer for him this past season ahead of the February trade deadline (the Suns ended up keeping Durant for the rest of the season) before again pursuing him early this offseason but again coming up empty.
The addition of Durant would have helped the Heat’s struggling offense, as Miami has finished with a bottom-10 offensive rating in each of the last three regular seasons.
Durant is still one of the NBA’s elite scorers even at the back-end of his career. He averaged 26.6 points, six rebounds, 4.2 assists and 1.2 blocks per game while shooting 52.7% from the field and 43 percent on six three-point attempts per game this past season for Suns in his 17th NBA season.
Durant and three-time NBA MVP Nikola Jokic were the only two players in the league who averaged at least 25 points per game while shooting better than 50% from the field and better than 40 percent from three-point range last regular season.
Instead, the Heat enters the busy part of the NBA offseason still searching for avenues to improve its roster.
Aside from being armed with the No. 20 overall pick in Wednesday’s first round of the NBA Draft, the Heat also already has 13 players under standard contracts for next season: Bam Adebayo, Tyler Herro, Andrew Wiggins, Terry Rozier, Duncan Robinson, Kyle Anderson, Haywood Highsmith, Nikola Jovic, Kel’el Ware, Kevin Love, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Pelle Larsson and Keshad Johnson (fully nonguaranteed $2 million salary for next season).
The only two players on the Heat’s season-ending 15-man standard roster who are set to enter free agency this summer are Davion Mitchell (restricted free agent) and Alec Burks (unrestricted free agent).
The Heat is currently operating above the salary cap and stands just $4 million away from the luxury-tax threshold. Unless the Heat sheds salary, it would only have minimum contracts, one of the midlevel exceptions (either the $14.1 million non-taxpayer midlevel exception or the $5.7 taxpayer million mid-level exception) and possibly the $5.1 million bi-annual exception to offer outside free agents this offseason.
The two-round NBA Draft will be held on Wednesday (first round) and Thursday (second round), with league-wide free-agent negotiations allowed to begin on June 30 at 6 p.m.
This story was originally published June 22, 2025 at 12:50 PM.