Phoenix Suns star Kevin Durant is fresh off another Olympic gold medal, his fourth representing Team USA, and will soon turn his attention towards his 17th NBA season. As he does so, the 35-year-old admits that he’s started to think about retirement in recent years.
“As I get older in the league and the league is getting younger, I tend to think about retirement more,” Durant said in an interview with TV One.
“[Retirement] creeps in my mind for sure,” Durant continued. “I honestly don’t know what I’ll do [when I stop playing]. I have a lot of different interests. I definitely want to stay around the game… That’s gonna be a huge, huge transition. I’ve been at this since I was 8. It’s gonna be hopefully 30 years of me doing this where every day was centered around the game of basketball. It hasn’t been no other lifestyle but this.”
Durant, the No. 2 overall pick in the 2007 NBA Draft, has been in the league so long that he was actually selected by the Seattle SuperSonics. The only other remaining active players from that draft class are Al Horford, Mike Conley and Jeff Green. While retirement doesn’t seem imminent for Durant, it’s no surprise that the 14-time All-Star has started to contemplate the reality that’s ahead of him.
Perhaps the more interesting question regarding Durant’s future, though, is what he’ll do at the end of his current contract with the Suns. He has two more fully guaranteed years left, and is set to become an unrestricted free agent in 2026. Will he ink an extension with the Suns ahead of time? Or make one last move to chase a title elsewhere?
Here’s what Durant had to say in February about the possibility of spending the rest of his career, however long that may be, in Phoenix:
“Right now I would say yes, but that’s just a figure of speech, I can’t know what’s going to happen,” Durant told ESPN. “I love playing in Phoenix, I love our fans, I love the city. … I realized what our mission is by being in the Valley and I realized how much these people care about their team. I started to understand the history of the Phoenix Suns and I am happy to be a part of it. One day, I would like to receive the franchise’s Ring of Honor.”
