Kevin Durant grants the Rockets their greatest wish with his extension

After much speculation, it's finally official. Kevin Durant has signed an extension with the Houston Rockets. Best of all, he took a massive discount.

It's almost unbelievable. In human terms, $90 million over two years is a staggering amount of money.

In NBA terms, it's what's colloquially known as "less than Kevin Durant money".

Yet, that's the value of Durant's extension. The superstar wing took a sizeable discount to stay in Space City.

The implications could not be bigger.

Rockets get Kevin Durant at an incredible price

Firstly, Durant has set a tone here. If he's willing to sacrifice for the Rockets, who could be unwilling to do the same?

It's become a hallmark of the Rafael Stone era. He gets his guys on team-friendly deals. Coupled with the fact that he's drafted so well, Stone is making his case as one of the best executives in the NBA.

His ability to secure team-friendly deals is going to continue to benefit the team.

Tari Eason is still without an extension. In two years, Amen Thompson will be considerably pricier as well. The Durant extension was always going to complicate matters:

Now, they're a little less complicated.

Rockets can put a top team around Durant

Surely, that factored into his decision-making.

Durant wanted to join the Rockets. That's no secret. It's apparent that he sees the value in what they're building, and he wants to be part of it.

That's easy to say, and more difficult to demonstrate. Every player says the right things when he joins a new team:

Durant is literally putting his money where his mouth is.

He was eligible for $120 million over these two years. Durant left $30 million on the table. That's a tremendous amount of wiggle room for settling matters with Thompson and Eason.

What does it mean for the future?

Rockets heading in the right direction

This should be an indication that the Rockets want to keep the young guys left on this roster.

If they had designs of acquiring another superstar veteran, Durant's dollar amount would matter less. They'd be aggregating young salary to trade for his new co-star anyway. The roster would be Durant, the new guy, and whatever the Rockets could keep around them.

Granted, any team benefits from a smaller deal in any circumstance. Still, we can likely assume that the Rockets want to extend Eason and Thompson from this deal. The fact that Durant made that task easier tells us that he's looking to lead this team:

And he's willing to be (a little) underpaid while doing it.