1 STAR ENOUGH
Nets hand them 4th straight loss as Durant waits on Harden & Irving
The Nets have Kevin Durant. That’s where it starts and ends with this trade. They can’t rely on Kyrie Irving, who remains out on a personal leave and has demonstrated, time and again, he is, at best, a flaky personality and, at worst, uninterested in basketball.
But Durant is reliably great. It was reinforced Wednesday when Brooklyn pounded the Knicks, 116-109, with Durant calmly dropped 26 points in just 30 minutes. Even on that surgically-repaired Achilles, you could argue he’s the best player in New York NBA history, counting Walt Frazier, Willis
Reed and Patrick Ewing. Durant’s a top-15 all-time great, a smooth assassin.
He’s also 31 and will become a free agent after next season.
So the Nets felt they have to capitalize, sacrificing their future in the process. GM Sean Marks spent years digging out of a hole and filled it with Durant, Harden, an unpredictable point guard and questionable depth. There will be plenty of references to 2013, when Brooklyn traded a draft haul for Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce. And that’s fair. There’s actually more swaps involved in this Harden deal. The last one extends to 2027, when Ivanka Trump will be eligible for her second impeachment.
It’s a high ceiling with combustible floor. No room for modest furniture in the middle. Championship or dynamite blast. If it blows up on Marks, it’ll be his replacement’s problem. There are obvious questions and concerns with the construction of an offensive-minded super team:
How can this possibly work with one ball?
Who will play defense? Is James Harden too out of shape for this season? Where is Kyrie Irving?
Those are queries for the coming days and weeks and months. At least for one day in an empty Garden, the shorthanded Nets (7-6), without Irving, Harden and Caris LeVert, won the battle of New York. It’s an easy conquest these days.
The Knicks (5-7), after all, are pretty much the opposite of the Nets. Mostly that’s because their stars don’t exist and there’s zero possibility of competing for a title. Wednesday represented their fourth straight defeat, a stretch that has revealed the predictable problems with a low-grade roster. But the Knicks are also loaded with future draft picks and cap space. They have the lowest payroll in the NBA, anomalistic to the James Dolan era.
There was a time, not too long ago, when Dolan would’ve pushed an acquisition to steal the Nets’ thunder. He did it in 2010 with Carmelo Anthony. But the Knicks’ moves have been quiet and nondescript since Brooklyn signed Durant and Irving.
Joe Tsai doesn’t move Dolan like Mikhail Prokhorov once did. Perhaps the lack of fans and booing is a calming influence on the owner, even while watching Wednesday from the second row as Durant, the free agent who got away, dissected the home team. Today, those ESPN reports of Dolan declining to offer Durant a max contract aren’t a good reflection on the owner’s judgement.
But coach Tom Thibodeau said his team will progress without a thought to the outer borough.
“We’re not concerned with them. They worry about themselves and we have to worry about us. So that’s what we’ll do,” Thibodeau said. “Our division is loaded. We know that. We know the makeup of each roster and we know that we have a lot of work to do and we’re looking forward to that challenge.”
Big challenges await the Nets as well. Just different kinds and on a different timeline. Their big move Wednesday jives with Durant, who deserves the placating. He can beat the Knicks by himself. The Nets are betting their future he can beat everybody with Harden.