The Brooklyn Nets have arguably the best player in basketball under contract for four years. The organization has a roster good enough to have spent much of last season as the championship favorite, despite the final standings.
Brooklyn has another superstar with the proven ability to make a key difference and win a title. It has an owner who likes the head coach and general manager enough to give them his vocal backing.
It also has, as of right now, the biggest mess in all of basketball to sift through, struggle past and somehow try to emerge from with some semblance of respectability.
Good luck.
Kevin Durant’s iteration to owner Joe Tsai this week that he is determined to leave via trade unless coach Steve Nash and GM Sean Marks are sent packing, followed closely by Tsai’s support of that pair, leaves the waters off Dumbo about as muddy as they could possibly be.
There is no workable trade market for Durant that doesn’t see the Nets get stiffed, even with him being contracted for four more years and a mere $194.2 million.
With Rudy Gobert having cost a package of five picks (including four first-rounders) and five players when he went from Utah to Minnesota, it stands to reason Durant would be worth considerably more. The problem arises, however, at the crossroad where it is rendered pointless to grab a player of Durant’s worth if you are sacrificing not only the pieces that could help him to a title but also your developmental future.
Pound-for-pound, Durant is probably worth eight first-rounders. No one is going to pony up that haul, however, even if they had it to spend. Not the Miami Heat, which is among the teams he wants to join, and not anyone.
This leaves Brooklyn with a major headache, an impending decision and with the unpredictable nature of Kyrie Irving and Ben Simmons and all their quirks at the top of the depth chart if Durant departs.
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Colin Cowherd breaks down what Kevin Durant’s ultimatum means for both parties, including how they should proceed in the next KD offseason chapter.
Meanwhile, after having waved goodbye to James Harden in the Simmons trade, the Nets saw — like the rest of us — Durant partying with Harden at a Travis Scott concert in London over the past few days. Try to figure that one out.
The whole situation is weird and unconventional, but Brooklyn is now finding out that it is no fun to have to answer to the whims of a superstar, and Durant is leading them on a merry ride.
“I thought KD should try to run it back with Brooklyn,” former NBA All-Star Antoine Walker said on FS1’s “First Things First.” “[Now] it’s not going to be possible. When you get a coach and GM that seems to want to do whatever it takes to make you happy contractually and to do whatever you can on the court, I don’t see why you’re upset by them.
“I’m baffled by KD saying he wanted [Nash and Marks] out, because it seemed those two guys were behind him.”
Durant is flexing the kind of influence only the very best in the game can wield. For the team on the receiving end of it, it is a time of paralysis. Yet there is not much sympathy for the Nets, either around the league or among the wider NBA fan base.
KD to Nets: “Trade me or fire Steve Nash, Sean Marks”
Kevin Durant is not budging on his desire to leave Brooklyn.
This is a situation of their own making. They took their shot, didn’t do it particularly well, and now they’re paying the price.
“No one feels sorry for the Brooklyn Nets,” wrote USA TODAY’s Jeff Zillgitt. “Not for [Tsai]. Not for [Marks]. Not for [Nash].
“When a team abandons a promising rebuilding effort for a quick path to title contention built around mercurial superstars and the fallout is disastrous, the empathy meter doesn’t register.”
That’s just how it goes. Sometimes, big, splashy moves for an elite player work. Just ask the Toronto Raptors, who parlayed a year of Kawhi Leonard into the greatest achievement in franchise history.
Winning a title without one of the best players in the sport isn’t really a thing in this current age, which is why teams try it this way. But there haven’t been many such swings that imploded as dramatically, and as quickly, as that of the Nets.
The Boston Celtics remain in contention as a trade partner, as do the Raptors, but the sort of package it would take to sway Tsai is a price unlikely to be met. Neither did Tsai enjoy having his feet held to the fire over Nash and Marks, issuing a statement that backed them and insisted he would “make decisions in the best interests of the Brooklyn Nets.”
For now, a standoff remains, one with no simple date of closure due to Durant’s contract length.
Durant, having decided this is not the place for him and with only so many shots at a third title remaining, is trying to help himself. The Nets are helpless, stuck in a position that they know can’t possibly turn out well for them.
They’ve gone from a star-laden force ready to be unleashed to a disaster waiting to happen. No viable strategic moves to make, no genuine leverage over Durant, and, most of it, absolutely no pity from all the teams thankful this isn’t happening to them.
