The Nets’ KD Trade Conundrum Is Sadly Looking More Like A When, Not If, Decision
Professional sports is a results-oriented business, so by those measures the Nets’ foray into the superstar-dominated subsection of the NBA has been a colossal failure. For all the money and hype invested, they have garnered exactly one playoff series victory since that once glorious day of June 30, 2019, when free agents Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, and DeAndre Jordan announced that they would team up in Brooklyn.
As a fan, I find it preferable when the teams I root for put their chips all in towards the ultimate goal of constructing a championship roster. I’ve seen the alternatives—miserly ownership and incompetent management—and it’s not fun.
Sure, the Nets could have stayed the course with the development culture they built prior to that deep dive. Those teams might have topped out at around 45 wins and, if they were really, really lucky, could have advanced into a second round. You know, the Knicks model.
So I have no regrets in applauding the Nets’ pivot when they were given the opportunity to go for broke. They gambled that building around KD, who will go down as one of the top 10 players in NBA history, in his late prime was worth everything—the freeloading Jordan, Kyrie’s cancerous unreliability—and then the trade for James Harden to minimize the impact of Kyrie’s cancerous unreliability—and all the incessant non-Kyrie drama that has followed, from coaching changes to constant player turnover.
Unfortunately, the window is rapidly closing. Harden was traded last year for the carcass that is Ben Simmons and his immovable contract and Irving was dealt to Dallas on Sunday for some decent pieces, but no one who has shown they can carry a team in the postseason.
That leaves Durant, who may or may not be on board with the organization’s direction. He requested a trade last summer but rescinded it before training camp. At 34, he is driven to win another ring, even if it’s not here. The Nets have reportedly told other teams that they will not be trading him in advance of Thursday’s deadline, but that’s not really the point.
Virtually every move the team has made since the so-called Clean Sweep has been for the here-and-now, and to hell with the future. Without the unlikely event that General manager Sean Marks pulls a second star out of his hat with a trade before Thursday (thanks again to the Harden flip, which cost Brooklyn two marketable young players and the rights to seven first-round picks and then returned just two picks, leaving them with insufficient capital), the future is in clear view, for this squad as it stands will surely come up short again this Spring. I can’t imagine that will put Durant in a good frame of mind when it comes thinking about to his next step.
As painful as it sounds—both to fans and to the organization that will have to deal with the financial consequence of irrelevancy—a KD trade might become necessary sooner than we had hoped--if not now, then by the summer. The only decision for the organization then becomes whether they think they’ll get a better return by waiting until more teams have the wherewithal to make competitive bids or if they think they can return better value now because the acquiring team will have Durant for four postseasons as opposed to three as per the contract extension he signed in 2021. If the Nets do it now and commit to the teardown, they could conceivably ask for a replenishment of all or most of their remaining lost picks.
A rebuild, or retool, isn’t easy to pull off without prime picks (unless Houston continues to stink in the swap years). It took three seasons of sheer misery before Marks was able to draft/develop enough talent to start to turn the corner the first time the franchise went this route after the failed Kevin Garnett/Paul Pierce blockbuster.
Marks did do well in selecting guard Cam Thomas and center Nic Claxton with later picks so the club could holster at least two young players who seem worthy of fitting into a rebuild. It also gives fans hope that he can turn whatever picks he secures in a Durant trade into additional competitive pieces.
Still, saying farewell to Durant would be devastating. No Nets fan should forget how he came within a toenail of singlehandedly disrupting Milwaukee’s championship season back in Game 7 of the 2021 Eastern Conference semifinals. Or simply the daily doses of professional dominance he subjected upon the rest of the league. It has truly been a privilege to watch him perform.
I wish it were enough. I watched the Nets lose a pair of back-to-back games at home the last two nights, and while I was insanely bitter at the first one to the Clippers over the wasted opportunity, Tuesday night’s 116-112 defeat to Phoenix just sent me into a depression. I cringed when anyone other than Thomas or Claxton shot the ball--and poor Thomas, who became the youngest player in league history to score at least 40 points in three straight games, admittedly ran out of gas in the second half.
I get that Brooklyn was depleted by injuries and the decision to let newly acquired Spencer Dinwiddie and Dorian Finney-Smith take the night off after the whirlwind of the trade, but I also thought, “Would any of the missing other than KD make me feel better about this team?”
I did not like my answer. Of course Durant’s brilliance, assuming he can return to health from his MCL sprain, likely after the All-Star break, as strong as he always has following rehabs, can wreck a playoff series by himself, but expecting more is unrealistic.
It’s almost like Brooklyn switched places with Dallas, who felt that their one awesome superstar Luka Doncic could only take them so far with a decent, but not scary, supporting cast. So they expended some of that decentness to double down on the top-25 talent that is Irving.
Maybe the Mavs will have better luck with that than the Nets did, though I wouldn’t bet on it.