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Over the last 7 days, the search term “Kevin Durant trade Minnesota Timberwolves” generated more than 100,000 Google searches. Durant, however, is still a member of the Rockets.
The likely culprit of this search trend appears to be an article the Last Word On Sports (LWOS) website published on Saturday under the false headline “Blockbuster 4-Team Rockets Trade Sends Kevin Durant To Timberwolves, Kyrie Irving Leaves Dallas, Mavericks and Bulls Involved.” Yahoo Sports syndicated the piece, which received coverage across several news outlets debunking the trade report.
Later, the LWOS article headline was updated to state that the Durant trade was rumored. The website also issued a correction, saying: “LWOS published a title that upon re-reading, implied a ‘confirmed’ trade. While we cover trade rumors and speculation, publishing an article with a purposely misleading title is not something we endorse. We will be sure to rectify this in our editorial process.”
“There was an inadvertent human error in the title of the article which was always intended to be a hypothetical trade idea and not an actual report of a trade,” Charles Mota, COO of LWOS, tells Front Office Sports. “We have issued a retraction and apologize for the mistake and confusion it caused. We will obviously look to do better going forward.”
A Yahoo Sports spokesperson tells Front Office Sports that the organization does not edit content that it syndicates from other websites, and that the LWOS article was not manually programmed to appear on Yahoo Sports. They also said that Yahoo Sports was choosing to keep the article up because LWOS corrected its headline to specify that Durant’s trade was “rumored.” (FOS is one of hundreds of partners whose stories get syndicated on Yahoo).
The spokesperson said that Yahoo Sports was not aware of this false LWOS headline until FOS brought it up. They added that the company will evaluate and remove publications that don’t meet their editorial standards, but declined to comment on whether they would re-evaluate their syndication of LWOS articles.
LWOS has published several speculative trade articles on its website, where headlines frame the prospective deals as real trades. For example, it has an article titled “Strategic 3-team Hawks Trade Sends Myles Turner to Atlanta, Magic and Bucks Accomplish Immediate Goals,” only clarifying that the trade is hypothetical in the actual piece.
The LWOS article about Durant leads with the claim that “the NBA offseason has officially descended into speculation territory,” but then writes that the speculated four-team Durant trade “completely reshapes the league’s competitive landscape.” It includes sending Anfernee Simmons, who is currently an unrestricted free agent, to the Mavericks, even though free agents are not able to be signed until June 30.
Durant is currently on a two-year, $90 million contract with the Rockets that extends through the 2027-28 season.
This is not the first incident where a Yahoo Sports–syndicated piece has generated buzz. On Friday, Newsweek published an article about Jason Whitlock’s claim that Caitlin Clark would be traded to the Los Angeles Sparks, which was syndicated on Yahoo Sports and included a common AI chat prompt. The prompt has since been removed.
