Day: February 11, 2023

A four-team trade between the Golden State Warriors, Atlanta Hawks, Detroit Pistons and Portland Trail Blazers is in peril following concerns over Gary Payton II’s physical exam.

The Warriors ruled Payton as a failed physical and have until Saturday to through with the deal or rescind the trade.

Payton has been playing through a core muscle injury and the Blazers’ training staff had been pushing him to gut through it with Toreador shots. This information had not been relayed to the Warriors during the negotiations.

Payton had abdominal surgery during the summer.

“Player safety is super important to us,” said Blazers general manager Joe Cronin. “It’s a super important thing around the league. We were playing him … he had been cleared and we were confident that he was healthy when he was playing. We would not have brought him back if we thought he wasn’t healthy or if we thought he was at risk. You trust that we did the right thing, and you trust that our process was correct, and these reports, you know, I think if you knew our clearance process was proper, so I will have to rely on that.”

The Warriors sent out James Wiseman to the Pistons to acquire Payton, while Detroit traded Saddiq Bey to the Hawks for five second round picks, which were sent to Portland.

Payton has two years and $17.8 million remaining on his contract after this season.

Payton signed a three-year, $26.1 million deal with the Blazers.

The Brooklyn Nets never budged from their asking price on a trade of Kevin Durant as their talks with the Phoenix Suns progressed during the week of the deadline. The Nets maintained a high asking price and received it from the Suns soon after Mat Ishbia assumed ownership.

Not only did the Nets acquire the full assortment of future first round picks and swaps from the Suns, but both Mikal Bridges and Cam Johnson. The Suns were entirely unwilling to trade Bridges and Johnson for Durant last offseason.

“What I know is Brooklyn put out an offer on Monday, I believe, at least the beginning of the week, and pretty much didn’t budge from that offer,” said Brian Windhorst. “And I don’t know how close they got with any other teams. I have no idea, but they pretty much said ‘This is what it’s going to take.’

“And the Suns, at the end of the day, acquiesced to it. They did because Ishbia was there, but as the week went on and they discussed it more and more, and they looked at it, I believe from my discussions that James Jones was in alignment with Mat Ishbia. I think that it is easy to make an assumption and I kind of was thinking that might have been the case, but I did the reporting and I feel comfortable in saying there was alignment in the organization.”