NBA 2018-19: What are the chances that Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving will move to New York?

One of the worst kept secrets in the NBA is the fact that the New York Knicks have two max spots open and are looking to fish two giant free agents this summer. And the thing that has fans on pins and needles is the idea of Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving both opting out and signing with the Knicks to form the next super team.

If that does happen, it would swing the power in the NBA in multiple ways. Firstly, it would make the Warriors mortal again. Sure, it could be argued that the Warriors will not win the title this year, but as things stand it would take a major injury for the Warriors to not get their third championship in a row (either that or Draymond Green having another meltdown) this coming June.

When Durant signed with the Golden State Warriors in the summer of 2016, it was one of the more polarizing moves the NBA had ever seen. How could one of the top five players in the game leave his team to go to one that had won 73 regular season games and was down 3-1 to your team in the playoffs?

The move boggled minds and immediately made the Warriors the clear favorites for as long as they kept the core of Curry-Thompson-Durant together.

Add DeMarcus Cousins to the mix this year, and the current starting lineup for the Warriors when healthy is one of the best the NBA has ever seen.

The buzz surrounding Durant this year has been due to the fact that he has not committed to the Warriors next year. His free agency is the massive elephant in the room that has not been addressed at all this season.

In fact, Durant has gone out of his way to not talk about these rumors of him jumping ship and going to the Knicks this summer. But the noise is there nonetheless. In a press conference, he called out the writers in the room for talking about his pending free agency.

Irving is the other player the New York Knicks could get this summer, but his story is a little different than Durant's.

Irving started his career with the Cleveland Cavaliers, where he wowed people with his ball handling and one on one skills. There might not be a better player in the world than him at putting the ball on a string in the open court or in the half court.

When LeBron James returned to Cleveland in 2015, Irving's role changed dramatically. He played second fiddle to LeBron for the three years they played together.

In the 2015 NBA Finals Irving was injured for most of it, and the Cavaliers lost in five games.

However, he was healthy in the 2016 Finals and hit the biggest shot in Cleveland Cavaliers' franchise history when his three-pointer from the right wing fell to put Cleveland in the lead in game 7 of the Finals and ultimately won them the championship.

It is a shot the basketball world will remember forever, and it helped defeat the 73-9 Warriors.

After the 2017 season, Irving made a surprise move and demanded a trade from the Cavaliers. He was betting on himself as a player and as a leader, and got his wish and was shipped to the Boston Celtics.

He has been a Celtic for a year and a half now, and his time there has been up and down - but more recently has been down. Irving has struggled with injuries his entire career and it has been no different in Boston.

Last year he missed the entire playoffs as the Celtics took his former team the Cavaliers to seven games in the Eastern Conference Finals.

This year the Celtics had high expectations with Gordon Hayward returning. Considering the progression of their young players seemed inevitable, many experts picked them to come out of the East.

However, the Celtics currently find themselves in fifth place in the East, and Irving looks less than thrilled about how they are playing. Which is why there have been rumblings about whether or not he will be wearing Celtic green come the 2019-2020 season.

The Irving story gets a little juicier when you look at the comments he made at a season ticket holder party in October before the season started.

Irving grabbed the microphone and said he would be returning and re-signing with Celtics after this year. It seemed like a promise - a promise that now looks like it won't be kept.

The Knicks seem prepared to make these two stars the focus of their off-season. They traded center Kristaps Porzingis, who last year was an all-star before tearing his ACL, to Dallas to clear the cap space necessary to sign two max players.

Moreover, the Knicks have their first-round draft pick with one of the worst records in the NBA this year, so they can use what is likely to be a top 5 pick to lure something in trade or to cash in on a very promising prospect in the draft.

The problem is that recent history would suggest the Knicks will not get this done. In recent years the Knicks have not been a place that big free agents go.

In 2010, it was rumored that the Knicks were in the running to get both LeBron James and Dwyane Wade, and instead settled for Amare Stoudemire. In 2014, the Knicks brought in Phil Jackson to run their basketball operations as president - a move that seemed puzzling at the time - and they ended up firing him before the end of the 2017 season.

Even though Jackson drafted Porzingis, his time as team president is noted as a failure and at times a joke.

Since the 1999 lockout season, where the New York Knicks made a surprise run to the NBA Finals, they have only won three playoff series. They have not even made the playoffs since 2014, and have been known to sign players to giant contracts who are not worth the money.

The worry is if Durant and Irving do not work out, the money the Knicks have will go to lesser players.

If the Knicks pull this off, they will be relevant for the first time in 20 years and might be a legit title contender next year. If they don't, it'd be just another failure which Knicks fans are all too familiar with, and could set them back unless they get someone great in the draft.