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The pursuit of Kevin Durant will be happening all weekend. The Oklahoma City Thunder went first and the Golden State Warriors followed. As is usually reported, those meetings "went well" in trying to recruit Durant to sign with them this offseason. Then the Los Angeles Clippers had their turn and while they'll struggle to offer max money without moving one of their Big Three, they did manage to impress him with their presentation in a four-hour meeting, according to ESPN's Chris Broussard.

He's reporting Durant was "blown away" by the meeting with the Clippers, which included owner Steve Ballmer, Doc Rivers, Lawrence Frank, DeAndre Jordan, and Blake Griffin. According to Broussard, the vision of the organization and the direction in the presentation were very impressive to Durant.


The Clippers have some tricky ground to navigate in order to acquire Durant and make it a Big Four. If they renounce all of their free agent rights and the draft rights to first-round pick Brice Johnson, the Clippers will still come up a couple million dollars short in giving Durant a max deal. It seems unlikely the Thunder would consider a sign-and-trade if they're not getting someone like Blake Griffin in return. So Durant would have to sacrifice some money and then keep re-signing in the next couple years before grabbing a long-term deal.

By going this route, the Clippers wouldn't have Durant's Bird rights, so they couldn't exceed the salary cap in order to re-sign him until he has multiple consecutive years with them. The Clippers would finally have some wiggle room in the summer of 2017 if either DeAndre Jordan or Chris Paul decline their player option and then take a discount in order to re-sign with the team. Otherwise the lack of Bird rights and the cap holds for empty roster spots would still restrict being able to offer even short-term max money to Durant.

If he keeps going with the one-and-one contracts with the Thunder until he maximizes the salary cap jumps over the next couple years, he'll stand to earn an extra $85 million with what the Thunder can offer him. If he's taking less and less money under the max while also not being able to grab the five-year max with the Clippers any time soon, it could end up costing him even more than the extra money he'd make with the Thunder, should things not work out.

Durant still has the Miami Heat, Boston Celtics, and San Antonio Spurs to meet with before one more round with the Thunder.

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The Clippers are trying to trap Kevin Durant in their jersey. USATSI