From Chicken To Kick-The Can: Nets Risky Games With Stars Not Over
In the end, Kyrie Irving blinked.
The Nets superstar guard will exercise his nearly $37 million player option and return to Brooklyn for the 2022-23 season, as reported on Monday by the most credible source you can have—Irving himself on social media.
Nets Twitter can stand down—for the moment. The contentious negotiations between the team and Irving had fans biting their fingernails off for these last few weeks. For with Irving and buddy Kevin Durant in tow—and clean bills of health on Ben Simmons and Joe Harris—a fully-staffed Nets squad is capable of competing for a title. If Irving had opted to leave as a free agent, however, it would have most likely led to the equivalent of a bursting dam that would have sent Brooklyn back into the abyss.
As the excellent Daily News reporter Kristian Winfield noted weeks ago, the Nets were playing with fire. (See my similar take here: Nets Still Have Time To Clear Irving “Impasse” (substack.com)) Management, meaning owner Joseph Tsai and General Manager Sean Marks, bet that the mercurial Irving, who suited up for only 29 games this past season because he refused to take the New York City-mandated COVID-19 vaccine, wouldn’t be able to find a willing partner to execute a sign-and-trade, thereby leaving him with no path out of town other than taking the unreasonable avenue of inking a $6 million mid-level exception deal with a team like the Lakers.
That the bet paid off for the Nets in the near term isn’t the only outcome from this sordid affair that matters, unfortunately. This entire episode bodes ill for how this franchise intends to operate going forward. There was a report from ESPN’s Brian Windhorst earlier on Monday that Tsai and Marks were willing to sacrifice Durant’s future with the team if that’s what it took to stand their ground against Irving’s asking price and term, under the logical assumption that KD would demand a trade if he felt the Nets weren’t committed to winning. Other reporters who were supposedly close to Durant said that he hasn’t communicated with management since the Nets season ended with an embarrassing four-game sweep at the hands of the Celtics in the first round of the playoffs.
If those reports have even an inkling of truth to them, what hubris on the Nets part. They have never employed a player of Durant’s caliber in their 46 years of NBA existence. If Marks really thinks his “culture club” is more important than what one of the greatest scorers this league has ever seen brings to the table, he is delusional.
Only two years removed from Achilles surgery, KD finished fourth in the league in scoring at 29 points per game this season. There were countless games where he willed severely-undermanned Brooklyn squads to victories through sheer two-way brilliance. Forced to log at least 40 minutes in 18 of his last 32 appearances, sandwiched around the 21 games he missed with a sprained MCL (during which the Nets went 5-16), he looked spent during the Celtics series. The playoffs notwithstanding, though, he’s still got it, at least for the next few years.
You build teams around Durant’s greatness. I know Irving has comically suggested that he wants to be involved in the team’s decision-making, but the reality is that this is KD’s show. To even consider alienating him in the offseason process is godawful business practice.
From what I heard, Durant wasn’t prepared to march into Marks’ office with a “If Kyrie goes, I go” ultimatum. Sure, he really wanted to try again alongside his good friend, but their friendship wasn’t at a level where Durant absolutely needed to be tethered to Irving.
KD, though, is very self-aware about what he has contributed to the game to date and what he wants to accomplish going forward. Turning 34 during training camp, he surely knows these next few seasons will eat up most, if not all, of his prime.
Durant wants to spend those seasons performing on the league’s biggest stages, not on teams that will be lucky to win a playoff round. He thought Brooklyn would provide that environment—that’s why he signed a four-year extension last offseason. As such, he also wouldn’t wait long before assessing a clear picture of the Nets’ Irving-less plan. He couldn’t. If it called for the unreliable Simmons to be the team’s second-best player, well, the Nets would have been put in a tough spot with a grumpy superstar.
And then what? A return to the days when development took precedence over game results? Who wants to see that after these last two seasons when the Nets were all-in on winning?
All Irving’s concession on Monday did was kick the can down the road another year. Management will face the same decision on Irving and consider the consequences should it not be enough.
Sure, there’s a chance that Irving on a one-year, prove-it deal will have him on his best behavior and make the Nets re-think their opposition to a long-term extension, but so much has to go right with this team for it to achieve its goal so all of this past season’s agonies can be forgiven.
Nets fans know better than to bet on that.