Nets and Clippers do

In the same summer the Brooklyn Nets stole both Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant from the Knicks’ free agency grasp, the Clippers beat the LeBron James Lakers in the Kawhi Leonard sweepstakes — by luring him with a Paul George trade. Those are the two “B-teams” in the biggest cities in the country, securing four of the 10 best players in the NBA overnight.

Or maybe there’s no such thing as a B-team anymore. Maybe they’ve finally evened the playing field and brought parity to the two coasts. Maybe little brothers have grown up, and now, they want their revenge.

After all, when the Nets moved to Brooklyn from New Jersey in 2012, they were always perceived as New York’s “other” team. And Los Angeles has always been a Lakers town, even though the Clippers have

been around since 1971. George and Leonard both wanted to play for the Lakers, and Durant and Irving wanted to play in New York. This much we know.

But these four stars took everything we thought we knew about superstars and their preferences, and flipped it onto its head in the span of a week. It appears looking in the mirror and getting your life together actually is a good life decision. The “B-teams” revolted by focusing on themselves. Maybe that’s the secret to life all along.

The Clippers were a tarnished franchise after the Donald Sterling tape leaked in 2014. Fired-up Steve Ballmer bought them from him two months later, but the franchise underwent a years-long image repair with Ballmer and Doc Rivers resetting things from the top down. The Nets also humbled themselves after trading four years worth of draft picks to Boston for an aging Kevin