When winning, & losing, are part of your culture
My how the tides have turned in New York.
Four summers ago, the Nets pulled off the clean sweep, signing superstars Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving in the 2019 offseason while the Knicks modestly signed Julius Randle to a three-year deal.
This season, the only thing getting swept is the Nets in their four-game season series against the Knicks.
The Knicks beat their crossbridge rivals, 105-93, in a matinee matchup at Madison Square Garden on Saturday.
They are now 3-0 against the Nets this year with a 12-point average margin of victory and a series finale back at The Garden on April 12 in the second-to-last game of the regular season.
How’s that for culture? Culture, of course, is how and why the Nets found themselves in this predicament. The Nets wanted to re-establish the culture after the chaos Irving brought to Barclays Center.
Nineteen more losses than wins and a star player who never suits up tells all you need to know about the state of affairs in Brooklyn.
The Nets have been through Kenny Atkinson, Steve Nash, Jacque Vaughn and likely soon interim coach Kevin Ollie, all while Tom Thibodeau is stringing together a Coach of the Year-deserving season at The Garden.
Not to mention Brooklyn’s cornerstone Mikal Bridges sporting a perpetual sad face after Nets losses, while his former Villanova teammates Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart and Donte DiVincenzo are headed to the playoffs.
“It’s like that SpongeBob meme when Squidward is looking out the window and he sees SpongeBob and Patrick having fun,” Hart said. “[Mikal] is Squidward.”
And while championship aspirations and the bright lights associated with superstardom are an afterthought for the Nets, a deep playoff run is on the table for the Knicks, who remain in play for the Eastern Conference’s No. 2 seed if they can string together enough wins — and get some help from their fellow conference foes — with 12 games remaining on the schedule.
The Knicks have the winning culture the Nets could never find.
Meanwhile, Brooklyn’s championship window has been welded shut: A byproduct of a fumbled opportunity at Barclays Center.
The Nets put together one of the league’s most feared trios of Durant, Irving and James Harden, then blew it up in the blink of an eye.
They gave up the kitchen sink for Harden, only to turn around and deal him to the Philadelphia 76ers for Ben Simmons.
They traded Irving to the Dallas Mavericks for Spencer Dinwiddie, Dorian Finney-Smith and draft capital (Dinwiddie has since been traded for Dennis Schroder), then moved Durant to the Phoenix Suns for Mikal Bridges, Cam Johnson and four draft picks.
In short: Durant, Irving and Harden are back chasing titles on separate Western Conference championship contenders, while the Nets are back to toiling at the bottom of the East, beholden to a poorly constructed roster and a max player with a bad back set to hamstring the roster with a $40 million salary next season.
As for the Knicks? They’re back. Full stop.
While the Nets sit five games behind the 10th seeded Atlanta Hawks, the Knicks are tied with the Orlando Magic for the fourth seed and are only three games out of second place in the East.
And while the Nets continue to clamor for a true “1A” star to lead the franchise from the depths of basketball purgatory, the Knicks have found theirs in Brunson.
The names on the back of the jersey were hardly a deciding factor for a Knicks team without three starters in OG Anunoby (elbow), Randle (shoulder) and Mitchell Robinson (ankle).
Culture continues to be the biggest difference between the two New York franchises. Culture, of course, is what the Nets wanted to restore in moving on from both Durant and Irving last season.
The Knicks returned home after a four-game road trip and had a short day’s rest before an early tipoff against a Nets team hoping to catch the 10th-seeded Hawks to sneak into the Play-In Tournament.
What was a close game in the first half became a no-contest in favor of the Knicks in the final two quarters because the Knicks have become accustomed to winning — while the Nets find new and creative ways to shoot themselves out of games on a nightly basis.
“It says a lot about [the players] and I love the mental toughness of our team, the ability to persevere through things,” Thibodeau said after the victory. “When things aren’t going our way, just keep going, then make it go our way and then in the end, find a way to win, whatever it is that we gotta do, that’s what we have to do. And it’s a credit to them [the players]. That’s the makeup of these guys and their willingness to commit to play for the team first and put everything they have into it. It says a lot about them.”