The Phoenix Suns traded Kevin Durant to the Houston Rockets on Sunday. The deal concluded a lengthy saga that began at the trade deadline, when Phoenix attempted to move Durant to the Golden State Warriors without his knowledge. Even though the deal fell through at that time, it unofficially launched the Durant sweepstakes. There was no chance at repairing the relationship at that point. The Suns have known they were moving on for five months.

And yet, the deal still underwhelmed. Jalen Green, Dillon Brooks and the No. 10 pick represent only a fraction of the value that the Suns paid to get Durant in 2023, and do little to launch the rebuild the Suns needed. This raises a few important questions surrounding the negotiations, starting with why Phoenix would even take so little.

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Well, the obvious assumption here is that nobody offered more. ESPN’s Shams Charania has more or less confirmed this. He and others reported frequently throughout the process that the San Antonio Spurs were not making aggressive offers. That’s hardly surprising in light of their youth, but the stranger reluctance here reportedly came from the Miami Heat. According to Charania, Miami “turned down the opportunity to place Jaime Jaquez Jr., Nikola Jovic, Haywood Highsmith, the No. 20 pick and other draft assets in a deal.”

Now, Charania is likely not indicating that every single asset listed was off of the table, but rather, Miami wasn’t willing to give up all of that stuff in addition to necessary matching salary (some combination of Andrew Wiggins, Duncan Robinson and Terry Rozier). Still, none of those are premium assets save perhaps Miami’s deep future first-round picks. It seems as though there might have been a deal here that didn’t even include Kel’El Ware, a prized young center whom ESPN said the Heat showed an “unwillingness” to move. Given Miami’s typical aggressiveness in pursuit of stars, their reluctance here is surprising.

That matters quite a bit because Durant was seemingly only interested in playing for three teams: the Rockets, Spurs and Heat. Other teams reportedly considered runs at Durant, including the Minnesota Timberwolves and Toronto Raptors, but Durant’s seeming disinterest in playing for them made negotiations difficult. Still, according Charania, two very interesting mystery teams factored into the proceedings: the Denver Nuggets and Cleveland Cavaliers. However, both teams faced obvious obstacles.

The Nuggets had very little to trade unless they were willing to include Aaron Gordon in the deal. Just matching salary alone without him would have been difficult. Michael Porter Jr. would have taken them a decent chunk of the way, but aggregating salaries would have imposed a second-apron hard cap they might not have been able to deal with. Even if they could, without tradable first-round picks until 2031 at the earliest, their asset pool was pretty shallow.

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Cleveland would have had an even harder time constructing a deal. The Cavaliers also would have needed to aggregate salaries, but are far above the second apron as is. They would have needed to send out significantly more money than they brought in to even make a trade legal. The Suns couldn’t have taken that money in, so they would have needed a third team. A package built around Jarrett Allen would have likely appealed to the center-needy Suns, but a trade here likely proved too complicated to be feasible.

So Durant landed in Houston, a destination that made sense from the start. The Rockets badly needed a high-end scorer and shooter. Several of their coaches, including Ime Udoka, have previous experience with Durant. He wanted to play for them, and they have the salary flexibility to give him a hefty extension. And, most importantly, they had the assets to make a deal like this without gutting their team. Durant was available for a discount, so they nabbed him and set themselves up to compete for the 2026 championship. The Suns, meanwhile, will either have to figure out how they can put a competitive team on the floor in spite of this weak return or find a way to rebuild without control of their future first-round picks.