What Happened To The Brooklyn Nets Big 3?

What Happened To The Brooklyn Nets Big 3?

Whatever happened to that net super team you know the one with Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving from a few years ago I mean in 2021 the New York Times called the Nets quote arguably the most talented team in basketball history at one point in time they had a trio of James Harden

Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant a threesome that is combined for three NBA titles two League MVPs 12 First Team all NBA selections and 32 All-Star appearances yet the early 2020s Nets go down in his history as one of if not the alltime failures of a super team right

There with the late ’90s Rockets the 04 Lakers and the 2013 Lakers so what happened before we start talking about this it cannot go overstated just how beset by injuries the Nets were especially to their core KD was obviously coming off an Achilles injury but he also dealt with covid a hamstring

Injury an MCL injury ankle injuries and what have you harden also dealt with a bad hammy during his tenure with the team and Kyrie missed time with a bum shoulder a hurt ankle and other stuff with many of those injuries and other situations we’ll get into later overlapping with each other the big

Three only ended up playing in 16 games together so with all of that out of the way let’s talk about all the dysfunction and decisions that led to the Brooklyn Nets downfall I think it’s well worth talking about the circumstances that surrounded these guys when they came to

The nets for starters Durant came to Brooklyn after he kind of wore out his welcome with the warriors with his INF Miss argument with Draymond and the Not So secret Whispers that he wanted to leave the bay and play in New York Kyrie came to the Nets after really wearing

Out his welcome in Boston I plan on resigning here next year so and by the time Harden was traded he’ gained a noticeable amount of weight and had begun publicly putting down his Rockets teammates which is not good enough none of the key players on the Nets showed up with good mojo on

Their side which was in a way part for the course for these guys you wouldn’t exactly call any of them locker room stabilizers when KD and Kyrie joined forces to kick all of this off people were immediately raising their eyebrows and looking around at each other like oh

Wow how are they going to mess this up and it started almost immediately when they got Kenny Atkinson fired less than a year into the experiment and when I say got him fired I don’t mean a player went up to the owner josi and demanded explicitly that the coach be fired that

Happens later but Atkinson inherited a dumpster fire when he became the head coach in 2017 with the franchise still reeling from the last time they haphazardly threw together talent for a super team and Atkinson killed it the Nets improved on their record year after year and even made the playoffs in 2019

With a roster mostly made up of non-lottery young guys bargain Ben vets and only a single 20 point perame scorer a reinvented D’Angelo Russell and even in 2020 with KD sidelined to the whole year and Kyrie missing most of the season with an injury without DLo or

Many of the other pieces that had been key to the net success the year prior Brooklyn was still in playoff contention none of it mattered though Atkinson had failed to connect with three key veteran players newcomers DeAndre Jordan Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant Atkinson resigned in March of 2020 less than a

Week before the league was put on pause but hey things like that have happened before the coaching thing not the world coming to a screeching halt thing David blat kind of got jobbed with the Cavs when LeBron went back and they went on to win the title so after the bubble the

Nets went out and got ads guy Steve Nash besides being a revolutionary offensive player and two-time League MVP in his own right Nash and KD had gotten close in Golden State while Nash was a consultant with the Warriors and for the 2021 season the Nets were pretty good KD

Eased himself back into the groove after his injury Kyrie was great and finished with 50490 splits and shoot they went and got freaking James Harden this was before the vaccine remember and they were playing in essentially empty gyms but the Nets finished with the second best record in the East and almost

Knocked off the Bucks in the second round had it not been for limiting injuries to Kyrie and Harden in the playoffs and Durant size 18 ft those Nets might have gone all the way they didn’t though and that’s when things really started to come apart less than a

Week before the 20202 season started it was announced that because of New York City’s covid vaccine mandate Kyrie Irving wouldn’t be eligible to play or practice in New York because of his decision not to be vaccinated he missed nearly the entire first half of the

Season as the rest of of the team tried to pick up the slack without him it wasn’t until January that the team basically out of pure desperation as injuries and workloads piled up started playing him in Road games as the Nets were trying to figure out what life

Looked like in a starting to be postco world one of their Marky players one of the keys to their team couldn’t play in their home games and you know that’s his decision and his right but still it made things a little weird around the office

Shall we say so weird in fact that James Harden reached into to his bag and pulled out a classic he requested to be traded he didn’t do it publicly but those of us studied in the Arts of Harden saw the signs Telltale inconsistency a lack of effort and a

General air of dissatisfaction only 13 months after joining the team he saw the signs Steve Nash was essentially powerless in the locker room Kyrie actually once said that he didn’t really see the Nets as having a head coach and Durant’s never really been one to take

Charge and straighten out a team and how could he with a limited roster playing Monster minutes while their point guard inserts himself right into the middle of a culture War as Harden later put it I didn’t ask to leave for no reason in February of 2022 the Nets traded hard

Into the Sixers for a return package headlined by Ben Simmons the very same Ben Simmons who had recently become the most heavily fined player in the history of the NBA because of his refusal to play for Philly the same Ben Simmons who would not play a game for the Nets in

The 2022 season I mean you cannot make this stuff up unsurprising ly the Nets were pretty uninspired down the stretch and were swept in the first round by the Celtics in June Kevin Durant asked for a trade because you know his co-star just spent an entire NBA season Waring with

The general public and the medical community over the global health issue of our age and a roster that is only comprised of guys who range from good to Ben Simmons a month later after not being traded reports came out that Durant went directly to joei and plainly

Stated that the only way he would remain with Brooklyn was under the condition that GM Shawn marks and Steve Nash were both fired yeah the head coach that Durant practically handpicked but wait a few weeks later Durant reportedly rescinded his trade request after meeting with sa marks and Nash together

To squash any beef so all is well right it’ll be smooth sailing the best player and the front office are all aligned they’re lock step in their vision and oh Steve Nash was fired seven games into the season cool cool yeah well uh I hope that Kyrie figured

Stuff out NBA star Kyrie Irving of the Brooklyn Nets shared a link last week on social media to a 2018 film that’s been described as anti-semitic another human I can post whatever I want so say that and shut it down and move on to the next

Question this is the part of the video where we’re transcending basketball issues and getting into just common human decency like yeah Durant’s the best player and he Bears a lot of the blame for the coaching decisions for hitching his wagon to Kyrie and Harden and for the weird trade request demand

That wasn’t a demand that still still got Steve Nash fired and all that but at this point this isn’t about basketball it’s not even so much that Kyrie promoted this anti-semitic film on Twitter it’s the fact that he failed at every opportunity to apologize he never had the self-awareness or took the time

Of self-reflection to see that what he was doing was wrong and in fact defended himself by doubling down on how enlightened and self-aware he was I’m a light I’m a beacon of light it’s what I’m here to do when he finally did deliver what was supposed to be an

Apology it was so inauthentic and forced that the ADL refused his $500,000 donation only when he was suspended from the nets for eight games did he finally make anything resembling an actual apology in other words only when Kyrie Irving’s employers finally stepped in and suspended him from his

Job for over 2 weeks because he was quote unfit to be associated with the Brooklyn Nets did he finally quote unquote AP oliz you can’t say that this Kyrie debacle is the reason the Nets failed I mean they weren’t exactly killing it before remember things were wacky enough that Harden wanted out

Before all of this happened but man if you think Travis Kelce dating Taylor Swift is a distraction I don’t know what in the world you call this you don’t need to be a Mystic to read the tea leaves on what happened next the team continued to be only halfway decent up

To the deadline when the Nets finally pulled the plug on their failed experiment Kyrie was traded to to the Mavericks on a Monday and Durant was sent to the Suns on Thursday just like that it was over the Net’s attempt at a super team had crashed and burned like a

Fast and furious pyrotechnic now Brooklyn is back to rebuilding rebuilding around what exactly it’s hard to say and the stars of the most talented basketball team ever are all back out there forging ahead trying to forget that all this ever happened another cautionary Tale in the long line

Of teams that tried to stack the deck if you listen to The Big Three talk about their experience in Brooklyn you’ll hear them talk about what a learning experience it was and how grateful they are to have gone through it and learned those lessons as they continue their

Championship quests on their new teams but as for the Nets themselves the team that got left behind worse for wear like a duplex in the path of a tornado did they get any consolation nope better luck next Time

Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, and James Harden formed one of the most talented teams in NBA history in Brooklyn. But how did it all fall apart so quickly? We revisit the short-lived Nets Big 3 experiment.

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