This past weekend, the Phoenix Suns' highly-anticipated 2023-24 season ended with a thud at the hands of Anthony Edwards, Degeneration-X, and the Minnesota Timberwolves in the opening round of the NBA Playoffs. The Wolves not only sent the Suns home much earlier than fans in Phoenix were expecting, but they did so in a sweep that was so convincing that it immediately raised questions regarding the future's of the Suns' trio of stars — Kevin Durant, Devin Booker, Bradley Beal — as well as head coach Frank Vogel.

During his end-of-season media availability on Wednesday, Suns general manager James Jones fielded questions regarding what the future may hold for the Suns, but Jones' most noteworthy statement came when discussing Kevin Durant, and how the Phoenix Suns believe they can “maximize” the talent of Durant in a way that no other team has managed to do.

Let's just start here: Kevin Durant will be turning 36 years old before the start of the 2024-25 season. He's already spent over a decade-and-a-half of his life in the NBA. He's the 8th-leading scorer in league history. It's not as if we're talking about a guy who has yet to enter the prime of his NBA career, and listen, that's not to say that Kevin Durant isn't still awesome. He absolutely is. But for James Jones to assert that there is possibly some amount of Kevin Durant's potential that remains untapped is, as the headline of this piece states, totally bonkers. And to think that the Phoenix Suns, who let's just be honest, haven't exactly been a pillar of stability either on OR off the court over the last few years, will be the team that finally unlocks it is, again, bonkers.

Now for a minute, let's take Phoenix out of the equation, because it's not as if I'm trying to pick on James Jones or the Suns. It would be just as outlandish if any of the other 29 general managers around the league were to say something like this. And that's because Kevin Durant's career accomplishments are that of someone whose talent has already been maximized.

Kevin Durant won an MVP and five scoring titles in Oklahoma City while also leading the Thunder to what is so far their only NBA Finals appearance since moving to OKC from Seattle. They used him in a variety of ways, and when it came time that he left the Thunder in 2016, the perception was that KD was heading to Golden State not only because the Warriors gave him a better chance to win his first NBA Title, but also because his skillset would finally be maximized as he played alongside Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green and Andre Iguodala.

Durant was the cheat-code in what was already a nearly unstoppable Golden State Warriors attack. While playing alongside multiple future Hall of Famers within an elaborate and beautiful offensive system like the Warriors', Durant's talent actually was maximized. Even on the defensive end, Durant played the best ball of his life with the Warriors. Golden State won back-to-back titles and Durant won back-to-back Finals MVP's, and had he not gone down with a torn achilles early in the 2019 NBA Finals, it's very possible that the Dubs could've three-peated.

But then Durant left Golden State for Brooklyn in the Summer of 2019, primarily because he saw that the Nets could be his team in a way that the Warriors never could be, but the trade-off was that he would be willingly stepping into a situation where his talent may not be maximized as well as it had the previous three seasons. The situation in Phoenix is really not all that different than it was in Brooklyn, and that's precisely the reason why as soon as the Suns lost to the Timberwolves, the rumor mill began swirling that Durant could potentially ask out of Phoenix, because historically, that's what he's done when he feels like the situation he's in has already ran it's course.

And no matter what James Jones says publicly, you have to imagine that there are some folks in Phoenix who may believe that cashing in all of their chips to pursue Durant in the first place might have been a mistake.