Spurs want in on Durant hunt, too

11:32 AM ET

The Kevin Durant sweepstakes understandably haven’t quite cranked up yet, just a few days into May, but they do share one notable trait at this embryonic stage with the rest of the NBA’s 2015-16 season.

The Golden State Warriors, whenever Durant’s future does come up, have been getting most of the attention so far.

When it comes to listing teams capable of stealing Durant away from the franchise he’s helped build into a perennial power — and from the fiercely proud and protective state that treasures him as one of its own — almost every list out there has Warriors at or near the top.

Just be sure to remember the following when you’re watching Durant, Russell Westbrook and the rest of the Oklahoma City Thunder play host to the San Antonio Spurs this weekend in a pivotal Game 3 on Friday and Game 4 on Sunday:

The stately Spurs, league sources say, are just as intrigued as Golden State by the thought of making a run at Durant come July 1.

As rough as the regular season was at times for the Thunder, amid a rash of a blown fourth-quarter leads and the tragic circumstances that snatched popular assistant coach Monty Williams from OKC’s bench, ‎Durant largely succeeded in his mission coming into the campaign to hush talk about his looming free agency as much as he could. We’re a mere 55 days away now from one of the game’s consensus top-five players hitting the open market, but the bulk of the discourse to date has focused on the teams planning to chase him as opposed to Durant’s presumed leanings.

Yet OKC suddenly can’t get through a single playoff game without being confronted by a foe playing for more than the mere W. As our own Zach Lowe also warned you in this series set-up piece, when he wrote of the Spurs “quietly discussing what kind of cap gymnastics it would take to get into the Durant derby,” standard postseason pressure is only a fraction of the burden weighing on the Thunder, even after they managed to rebound from a Game 1 no-show in San Antonio by stealing Game 2 on the road.

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As well as Durant and his close-knit tandem of representatives, Rich Kleiman and Charlie Bell, have done in terms of keeping their intentions mysterious, there is a working assumption among KD’s would-be suitors that a second-round Thunder exit essentially cinches the notion that he’ll indeed walk away and look for the best external situation that positions him to win that elusive first championship.

The theory (stress: theory) also holds that OKC success in this round against the 67-win Spurs would be enough, no matter what happens in a presumed Western Conference finals showdown with the Warriors, to convince Durant, at the very least, to sign a new two-year deal with Oklahoma City ‎that contains a player option for Year 2. Going that route would thus allow Durant to not only give himself one more chance to win that breakthrough title in Thunder colors but also return to free agency in the summer of 2017 eligible for a contract that could be up to $40 million richer and do so alongside Westbrook, …

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