It is a basketball calamity, a basketball disaster, a basketball cataclysm. Ignore the spin that shall be generated by all of this by the entire events. Disregard the epic haul that's prone to begin heading to Brooklyn someday quickly. This isn't hyperbole. This isn't overstatement.
That is basketball Armageddon.
Three years to the day after the Nets shocked the NBA by luring Kevin Durant to city, Durant and his enterprise supervisor, Wealthy Kleiman, requested a commerce. Three years to the day after Sean Marks, the Brooklyn boss, regarded like the neatest child at school — and didn’t precisely dissuade anybody from pondering that manner — he agreed to Durant’s request. That's it. That's all.
That's horrendous. It's disastrous. Any manner you chop it up.
For the Nets, it means the tip of a basketball experiment that at all times appeared based mostly on spec, at all times felt heavy on what-ifs and what-might-bes. They agreed to finance Durant’s yr away from the game as he recovered from Achilles surgical procedure, seeing it as a small funding for a doubtlessly large payoff. They agreed to Durant’s phrases of engagement, which included signing the mercurial Kyrie Irving and the glacial DeAndre Jordan.
In return they acquired two years of sensible basketball out of Durant. However in addition they performed three playoff sequence in that point, and misplaced two. They endured a yr of chaos in 2021-22, a lot of it courtesy of Irving, and clearly that modified Durant’s mindset from all-in — he signed a four-year, $198 million extension lower than 11 months in the past, in spite of everything, a deal that also has but to kick in — to get-me-out-of-here.
The Nets will certainly obtain an unprecedented return from Phoenix or Miami or another suitor, and there'll probably be some helpful items making their manner towards Brooklyn, however that wasn’t the narrative that was imagined to outline the Nets. They introduced Durant right here to win the franchise’s first title for the reason that last ABA Championship in 1976. Interval.
It was title or bust on June 30, 2019.
It was merely bust by June 30, 2022.
However Durant doesn’t escape unscathed, both, not by a protracted shot. A part of the attraction of coming to Brooklyn (in addition to attempting to duplicate the “super-team” blueprint copyrighted — twice now — by LeBron James) was to reverse the label he’d been slapped with when he jumped Oklahoma Metropolis for Golden State. That maneuver stamped him a shameless front-running mercenary, a rap he couldn’t shake even after accumulating bookend Finals MVPs with the Warriors.
Now he desires out of Brooklyn. Absolutely he has his causes. If one in every of them is Kyrie — effectively, it was Durant the de facto GM who made Irving’s acquisition a vital a part of his willingness to play at Barclays Heart. If one in every of them is Steve Nash, who has regarded overmatched (at greatest) and overwhelmed (at worst) in his first two years as a coach — effectively, it was Durant who made it plain (together with different distinguished crew voices) that they have been less-than-enamored with Kenny Atkinson.
If one in every of them is a quashed perception that the Nets can truly win a championship as presently constructed? Effectively, he’s in all probability proper. And if he winds up someplace like Phoenix or Miami, he'll journey the coattails of established franchise alpha canines like Devin Booker, Chris Paul, Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo exactly as he as soon as did Steph Curry’s, Klay Thompson’s and Draymond Inexperienced’s.
And people like Charles Barkley — who just lately argued that Durant wants a bus of his personal to drive if he ever desires to be remembered among the many sport’s rarefied elite — shall be justified in hammering him without end.
This entire script has been star-crossed from the start. Irving solely performed 20 video games in 2019-20. Irving and James Harden have been each damage in opposition to the Bucks a yr later, in what was almost Durant’s best hour as a professional. Irving’s vaccination standing hung like a darkish cloud over this previous season, and Harden bullied his manner out of city, which culminated in a humiliating four-game sweep by the Celtics.
The lone silver lining was Durant’s brilliance throughout 90 regular-season video games, and 16 postseason ones. Nobody can query his otherworldly ability. And he appeared to genuinely care about the place the Nets have been, and the place they have been going.
Till he didn’t.
Till he requested a commerce, and was instructed his needs can be honored, three years to the day after permitting the Nets to dream greater and bolder than they ever had earlier than, permitting them to imagine their very own hype that they have been the neatest children within the class. Now a famous person’s status lies in items and a GM’s imaginative and prescient lies in tatters. They are going to attempt to spin it in a different way. Don’t imagine them. This was a fail.
An epic, historic, unmitigated fail.
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