Kevin Durant Is Staying In Brooklyn With A $198M Extension And He's Absolutely Worth Every Penny

Steven Ryan. Getty Images.

At this point nobody should really be surprised with this extension. You didn't really think KD was going to opt out of his contract next year and leave Brooklyn right? The same way we're going to see this same tweet for Harden and Kyrie once they are eligible. It's all mostly a formality. While this is an insane amount of money per year, I also feel pretty confident in saying Kevin Durant is worth every goddamn penny. Even coming off his achilles injury, he proved he's better than ever

and he's practically carrying Team USA by himself as they compete for a gold medal. As someone who thoroughly enjoys watching him play, it's awesome to see that an injury that for pretty much all of NBA history has been a death sentence, KD is still KD and then some. Even 50M a year probably isn't his true worth. He's in that LeBron class where there is no number too high for KD. When you're the best player on the world, that's the reality. Paying someone like Jimmy Butler 50M in a season isn't exactly the same as paying Durant 50M. While the Nets didn't really have a choice in the matter since they're not going to make this super team just to NOT give out max extensions, it does mean they aren't going anywhere anytime soon. In fact, if you look at the depth pieces they've added this offseason, they should be even better. That's pretty terrifying.

Remember, KD's toe gets behind that line against the Bucks, they probably win the title this year. When you're that close, money is whatever. You pay whatever you can to keep that core together. Now I wonder if this is why KD has looked so good in the Olympics. He's riding that 198M high. Imagine that feeling? Sure he is already rich as fuck so that's not new but 198M is 198M. The fun part about Durant is even with this massive extension he's still going to hop on Twitter and go back and forth with people. You would think someone with that much money would have better things to do, but he loves being online. We can all relate to that.