Kevin Durant is about to enter free agency for the first time in his career on Friday at 12:01 a.m. EST. He signed an extension after his rookie deal, so this will be his first real experience getting the red carpet treatment from the group of teams lucky enough to be in the running for his services. Except, a national reporter is now joining a previous localized Oklahoma City report in alleging that Durant might just go ahead and sign a bigger multi-year deal anyway, regardless of how much money he’ll miss out on in free agency next summer.

Per Steve Kyler at Basketball Insiders, Durant is allegedly already gloomy about the prospect of free agency on the horizon again if he signs the one-and-one deal that’s his most logical option for a financial windfall:

…Sources close to Durant said recently that his looming free agency was incredibly stressful and distracting and that Durant isn’t overly eager to go through this again and that these meetings may be more than just going through the motions. He is genuinely planning to listen to options and see what’s available to him and may make a long-term commitment with whatever team he chooses. There is still a sense that Oklahoma City could be the front runner and with the moves the team made around the draft to add even more to the team, they did not hurt their cause acquiring Victor Oladipo, Domantas Sabonis and Ersan Ilyasova.

You can go back and read why a one-and-one deal, with a player option on the second year, makes the most financial sense for Durant.

In brief, with an appreciably higher salary cap next summer when the new TV-rights money finally starts flooding in, and with Durant completing his tenth year during this upcoming 2016-17 campaign, which places him in the highest maximum allowable contract tier, he stands to make significantly more money if he signs a one-and-one deal this year and opts out next summer.

That combined with the fact Russell Westbrook will also be a free agent next summer, and it just makes the most sense.

However, might Durant be willing to sacrifice millions of dollars and a tandem free agency with his Thunder co-star to avoid free agency questions over the duration of another season? Now we know that sources have told both Doug Blevins — the Channel 9 KWTV News reporter who alluded to the same thing over the weekend — and Basketball Insiders that Durant doesn’t want to answer the same tired free agency questions for another year. Despite these reports and the purely speculative belief that Durant really does loathe all this free agency talk, leaving millions of dollars on the table is still not very likely. We’re still figuring on a one-and-one deal with Durant in the unenviable — at least for him — position of more questions about his long-term future.

(Basketball Insiders)