Egoless Cavaliers a welcome difference from NBA divas | Jeff Schudel

Jul. 2—I would really like to know if you agree with me on this, or maybe you like the way it's done. And if you do, so be it.

In my opinion, it is bad for basketball when a player as talented as Kevin Durant, with four years left on his contract with the Brooklyn Nets, can just up and demand a trade, then management caves and gives him what he wants. Durant hasn't been traded yet. But it seems very, very unlikely he will be with the Nets in 2022-23.

The Cavaliers are so refreshing by contrast. They are a team with no inflated egos, but they are super competitive and want to win every night. And Cavaliers management is determined to win, as evidenced by the five-year, $193 million contract they handed Darius Garland on July 2.

Durant isn't the first NBA star to make such demands, and he won't be the last.

James Harden forced the Houston Rockets to trade him to the Brooklyn Nets early in the 2020-21 season. The Nets sent Houston three first-round draft picks (2022, 2024 and 2026) and four first-round pick swaps (2021, 2023, 2025 and 2027) to Houston.

The Cavaliers were part of a three-team trade to make the deal work and ended up with center Jarrett Allen in the exchange. It was a shrewd move by Cavaliers now-president of basketball operations Koby Altman, because all it cost the Cavs was guard Dante Exum and a 2022 first-round draft pick (via the Bucks). The Cavaliers also got forward Taurean Prince in the deal.

The Nets envisioned Durant, Harden and Kyrie Irving leading them to multiple championships, but they never meshed. A big part of the problem in 2021-22 was Irving couldn't play in most of the Nets' home games because he wasn't vaccinated.

Harden grew unhappy with the Nets last season. He was not as vocal as when he wanted out of Houston, but he got what he wanted — a trade to the Philadelphia 76ers. The Nets sent Harden and Paul Millsap to Philadelphia in exchange for Ben Simmons, Andre Drummond, a 2022 unprotected first-round pick and a 2027 protected first-round pick.

Harden seems happy in Philadelphia, at least for now. He opted out of picking up his $47.36 million player option for next season with the apparent intention of signing for less money so the Sixers could be active in free agency by signing Harden's friend and former teammate in Houston, P.J. Tucker. The Sixers are expected to announce the Tucker signing on July 6, the first free agent deals become official.

Don't give Harden any Good Guy medals, by the way. His new deal is expected to be around $35 million a year, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, so he probably won't have to buy his groceries at a discount store.

There are other examples of whiny NBA divas. Anthony Davis forced his way out of New Orleans in 2019. The Pelicans traded him before he would have become an unrestricted free agent in 2020.

The Pelicans got Lonzo Ball, Brandon Ingram, and Josh Hart, as well as three first-round picks in the trade. The Lakers mortgaged their future, but they got the 2020 NBA championship out of the deal. So until the haul New Orleans got turns into a championship, it is difficult to say the Pelicans won the trade.

General managers who sell off draft picks to acquire superstars and then have the superstar turn against them often lose their jobs.

Jimmy Butler grumbled loud and long enough in Minnesota after a little more than one season with the Timberwolves that the T-Wolves traded him to the 76ers for Robert Covington, Dario Saric, Jerryd Bayless and a 2022 second-round pick. The 76ers got Butler and Justin Patton in the trade.

The Timberwolves on June 22, 2017 (draft night that year) traded guards Kris Dunn and Zach LaVine, power forward Lauri Markkanen (now a Cavalier) and the seventh pick in the 2017 draft to the Bulls for Butler and the 16th pick in 2017. The hope was reuniting Butler with former Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau in Minnesota would make the T-Wolves a contender, but Butler torpedoed those hopes with his trade requests.

Thibodeau is now coaching the Knicks, but the Butler incident hastened his exit out of Minnesota.

And on the subject of NBA divas, no one fits the description better than Irving and Ben Simmons, albeit for different reasons. Simmons seems uncoachable, as he proved with the 76ers and Nets. Irving is undependable and just plain weird.

LeBron James thinks he is the center of the NBA universe (well, maybe he is). But give him credit for one thing: He signs a contract and honors it through its expiration. He did that twice with the Cavaliers, once with the Heat and is doing it now with the Lakers.

—There is one more thing about the NBA that bugs me — all the official reviews that seem to pile up in the last two minutes of a game. The timeouts and intentional fouls slow things down enough, but the reviews grind the flow of a game to a halt.

OK. That's enough belly-aching. Happy Fourth of July!

I didn't know that

... until I read my Snapple bottle cap.

If you could drive your car upward, you would be in space in less than an hour. ... The average dog can understand more than 150 words. ... The first hot air balloon passengers were a duck, a rooster and a sheep. ... Early sunscreen included tar, clay, iron, rice bran and oil. ... A law in Arizona makes a donkey sleeping in a bathtub illegal. ... Gorillas burp when they are happy.