With Kyrie Irving dominating the information cycle in latest days, now looks as if nearly as good a time as any to remind you that even when you take all of the Brooklyn Nets’ off-court points out of the equation, they’re nonetheless a very unhealthy basketball staff.
I don’t suppose it’s in the slightest degree hyperbolic to say that over the previous few years, the Nets have confirmed themselves to be the largest disappointment — the largest failure — within the NBA of the twenty first century, and perhaps of all time. No matter what staff of yesteryear didn’t reside as much as the hype, none has finished it with fairly the pizazz of Brooklyn.
The Nets have severely underperformed a lot that the disappointing Kobe Bryant-Dwight Howard-Pau Gasol Lakers staff that earned the No. 7 seed and was swept within the first spherical of the playoffs, or the ringless Kevin Durant-Russell Westbrook-James Harden Thunder squads — with three eventual MVPs on the roster — don’t even come near this unmitigated catastrophe.
It looks as if an impossibly very long time in the past, however suppose again to how involved you have been for the remainder of the league if you came upon that Harden was traded to the Nets to affix Irving and Durant. Many believed {that a} staff with two of the best scorers the sport has ever seen and one man with good handles wouldn’t simply win one championship, however a number of. They would possibly’ve been the following NBA dynasty.
Three years into Kyrie and KD’s tenure in Brooklyn — with seemingly dozens of controversies below their belt and Harden swapped for Ben Simmons — there’s solely a single playoff sequence win to indicate for it.
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So far, the Nets are 3-6 in their first nine games to start this year, have the worst defensive rating in the league, fired their coach, suspended their mercurial point guard, and at best are a play-in team for the second year in a row — if they’re lucky.
Even if you focus on just the basketball aspect, no team has ever done less with more.
“But if Kevin Durant was a shoe size smaller.” Well, he’s not. That’s the lamest excuse I’ve ever heard and one that for some reason people only apply here. You’ve never heard, “Well if Lebron James’ wingspan was a little bit shorter, Andre Iguadola would’ve made that layup.”
“Well if New York City didn’t have a vaccine mandate for most of last season, Kyrie would’ve played the whole year and the Nets would’ve been a higher seed with better team chemistry.” But it did, and it was Kyrie’s decision not to get vaccinated. Plus it’s far from guaranteed they would’ve actually been good enough to get past the Eastern Conference champion Celtics, who swept Brooklyn.
This team is completely broken, from top to bottom. The Nets have accomplished nothing since this particular group of stars was brought together, and they will accomplish nothing in the future. Harden was able to get out, and now the Nets have Simmons who appears to be like even worse to start out this season than once we final noticed him taking part in basketball, passing up dunks within the playoffs.
It doesn’t matter how good the person gamers are, they’re simply not a very good staff. When Irving comes again from suspension, I’m certain he’ll proceed to attain 26.9 factors per sport on 21.5 area objective makes an attempt till the All-Star break when he decides to maneuver to Belize to start out a faith. Durant will get his 30 as effectively, however it is going to come throughout an terrible lot of losses.
There’s no clear path for how you can transfer on from this explicit iteration of the Brooklyn Nets. Durant has already requested a commerce that didn’t occur, seemingly as a result of he’s price greater than any staff is keen to surrender. He’s not a free agent till 2026. Simmons isn’t a free agent till 2025, and I can’t think about any staff that isn’t rostered with a Harden who desires to depart would commerce for him.
There have been rumors about Irving to the Lakers, nevertheless it appears more and more unlikely as a result of what staff would need that distraction? The silver lining is that he’s a free agent this offseason, so Brooklyn might all the time let him stroll. The Nets have two first-round picks on this upcoming draft after which don’t have one other till 2027.
This staff’s current appears to be like fairly bleak and the long run doesn’t look a lot better. They did it to themselves by assembling this group of proficient however ill-fitting items like a toddler defiantly making an attempt to make the triangle match into the square-shaped gap.