The Clock Struck 12 On Nets’ Scary Hours With Harden Trade

Blame Marks, Irving For Premature Breakup

364 minutes.

That’s the amount of time the Nets Big 3 of Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, and James Harden shared the basketball court in their 16 games together over the last season-plus, according to NBA.com.

In those minutes, Brooklyn outscored their opposition, 967-854, which equates to 128-113 in a 48-minute game. The Nets went 13-3 in those contests, including 5-1 in the playoffs.

Unfortunately, injuries and Irving’s erratic behavior, especially his refusal to be injected with the COVID-19 vaccine that has been keeping him out of home games this season, prevented fans from seeing what such a potentially historic trio could have accomplished. And with Harden traded to Philadelphia before Thursday’s deadline, not only has one-third of the Nets’ three-headed monster been slayed, their championship dreams for this season are also dead.

For the Nets were an incomplete team before Thursday’s blockbuster, and that did not change in its aftermath.

Say what you will about the return package Brooklyn General Manager Sean Marks garnered from counterpart Daryl Morey, which included disgruntled All-Star Ben Simmons, who hasn’t played all season citing mental readiness, three-point artist Seth Curry, center Andre Drummond, and two first-round draft picks--the reality is that the Nets are not a better team today, and they needed to be if they had designs of keeping pace with all the improved clubs in the Eastern Conference.

I’m not talking about the future, where the Nets will benefit from not having to pay the 32-year old Harden a record-setting, long-term contract as a pending free agent and the welcomed flexibility from the extra picks. This season—this championship-or-bust season—has gone bust.

Even though Brooklyn had been sliding down in the standings and lost their 10th straight game on Thursday in Washington, 113-112, I had not given up hope. However, it required action from management, since I knew that their shot at glory rested not only on getting the Big 3 healthy (and Irving vaccinated) by playoff time, but Marks also needed to balance the roster.

He failed. The players the Nets received from Philly are better versions of what they already have—in Simmons’ case, a dramatically bigger and better version of a non-shooting athletic defender. Curry might be able to improve upon Patty Mills’ efficiencies but at 6-foot 2, he will be similarly exposed at the other end by bigger teams in Brooklyn’s switching schemes, especially when paired with Irving. And Drummond becomes the fifth center on a 15-man roster—he’ll have to battle for playing time with LaMarcus Aldridge, Nicolas Claxton, and Blake Griffin, with rookie Day’Ron Sharpe heading back to the end of the bench when everyone returns to health, because Head Coach Steve Nash is loath to play more than one big at a time, if that—he has closed several games this season with either Durant or James Johnson at the 5.

Marks wasn’t able to address the team’s two biggest needs going into Thursday—a legitimate 3-and-D wing who could at least occupy a potential help defender and another shot creator—by moving his remaining marketable pieces like injured wing Joe Harris or Claxton. Instead, by the end of the day what was created was another floor spacing (and potentially general) headache via the Simmons acquisition while one of the best shot creators of all time in Harden was cast away.

And don’t pin your hopes on the buyout market coming to the rescue either. Players of that caliber rarely become available and if they did, who’d choose a team in such a freefall? The Scary Hours are but a memory.

I’d like to concur with others who say that this was no fault of his own, that Harden forced his hand, but Marks is responsible for the environment that soured The Beard on Brooklyn. After the Nets fell a KD-toenail short in their second-round matchup with eventual champion Milwaukee, Marks overcorrected by focusing this past offseason on obtaining more defensive-oriented players, shooting be damned. On the face, it sounded justifiable, given the Nets’ 21st-ranked defensive rating last season, but it turned into a gross miscalculation, because Harden was too often saddled with teammates on the court who didn’t have to be guarded outside of the paint.

That’s not how he thrives. Remember Harden when he first arrived in Brooklyn from Houston about 13 months ago? He noted that he had already accomplished so many individual goals but had yet to win a ring and then he backed up that talk by orchestrating beautiful team basketball. He seemed content to act as a connector, very comfortable with taking fewer field goal attempts.

That all changed this season. Why? Instead of passing to the likes of Jeff Green or Landry Shamet, who can make open three-point shots at a high clip, Harden was looking around and seeing guys like Johnson and the waived DeAndre’ Bembry open on the perimeter. Harden would often have to circle back to recover the ball and start over. He was on his own against packed paints, growing frustrated with each inconsistent outing, all the while fighting through a slow recovery from last season’s severe hamstring strain and the uneven officiating under new league guidelines. No wonder he was guilty of an excess number of poor decisions with the ball in his hands.

This was exacerbated by Irving’s anti-vax stance, which initially exiled him from all team events before the organization relented on road games starting in January. You could tell that Harden grew more miffed about the situation as the season rolled along, especially after Durant suffered an MCL sprain on January 15. The Nets have gone 2-11 since, with Harden missing five of the seven games before the trade with what was reported by the Nets as a sore hamstring. To many, it looked like he had given up.

It was Irving’s, um, nature that allegedly pushed Marks into trading his full deck (Jarrett Allen, Caris LeVert, Taurean Prince, Rodions Kurucs, three first-round picks, and four first-round pick swaps) for Harden in the first place—Harden was said to be Kyrie insurance. It was on Marks to have a plan when it came time to administering the claim by surrounding Harden with shooters.

Instead, the Nets’ roster is saddled with too many unplayable guys when compared to their competition. Injuries are part of life in the NBA, so the best teams are those that can plug in the next men up without missing much of a beat. Even the lousy Wizards, who were down injured star guard Bradley Beal and had just traded away Spencer Dinwiddie, Davis Bertans, and Montrezl Harrell earlier in the day, were able to get the better of a similarly-depleted Brooklyn squad that still featured Irving. What does that tell you about Brooklyn’s depth?

Getting Durant back will cure a lot of ills, but only to a point. The Nets weren’t beating the top teams earlier in the season in a two-star format. The blueprint had always called for the Big 3 to outscore opponents--and the small sample showed they were capable of just that.   

The Harden trade wasn’t the worst-case scenario—that would have been losing him for nothing if Morey indeed went nuclear and pawned off both Simmons and Tobias Harris in the offseason to clear the salary cap space to sign Harden outright.

Still, Thursday wasn’t a good day for Nets fans. The sound you heard around 1:15pm wasn’t just another Woj Bomb--it was the shutting of the Nets’ championship window for this season.