Kevin Durant came back to Phoenix on Tuesday with four games left in the regular season, and he used his first words in the Valley since being traded to the Houston Rockets last June to make one thing plain: he is moving on. The Phoenix Suns hosted the Rockets in a nationally televised primetime game that carried a sharper edge because Durant was back in the building.
Durant said he felt “booted out of the building and scapegoated” after the trade, but added Tuesday, “I’m pretty much over it.” He said there was “not much sentimental value between me and this place,” even though he said he always felt the love from Suns fans and appreciated his time in Phoenix.
That time was shorter than many expected. Durant said he was only in Phoenix for a short amount of time and that he “wasn’t here long enough to really feel like I left a mark here.” He added, “That’s unfortunate because I want to leave marks everywhere I go,” before saying, “But it is what it is, you move on and appreciate the time spent.”
The Suns won one playoff series during Durant’s run with the team, a modest return for a roster that arrived with bigger ambitions. Durant had already said in earlier comments that he felt scapegoated and hurt by the trade, and his return on Tuesday put that history back in front of a crowd that included both fervent supporters and vocal critics. He had missed Houston’s first game in Phoenix in late November because of a personal matter.
There was another layer to the matchup, too. Jalen Green was facing Houston for the first time since he was traded, while Dillon Brooks was active in the prior meetings with the Suns. That made the Rockets-Suns game more than another late-season stop; it was a reminder of how quickly a roster can change and how little sentiment survives in the middle of it.
Durant said Phoenix was “a great place to live” and that he “definitely loved living here,” but he drew a clear line between liking the city and feeling attached to what happened on the court. In a league built on movement, Tuesday felt less like a reunion than an acknowledgment that the business has already passed the emotional part of the story.
