Trading Kevin Durant to the Suns punctuates big disaster by Nets | Opinion
Durant now headed to the Phoenix Suns and the Nets pivoting to an entirely new franchise paradigm, it is worth tallying up what the last four seasons have wrought. For a team that managed to get three all-time talents on the same roster with Durant, Irving and James Harden, it’s an almost inconceivable scale of disaster that to be left with only Ben Simmons standing amid the rubble. Irving requested a trade last week – a move born out of Brooklyn’s justifiable hesitation to give him a long-term deal – the superteam experiment was over. The only real question was whether the Nets would have enough time before the trade deadline to put a deal together for Durant or whether that piece of business would need to take place in the offseason.
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From a purely transactional standpoint, the Nets haven’t done too badly. Now loaded up on future first-round draft picks, they have a lane to spin off even more assets and go into a complete rebuild like Oklahoma City. Or, having acquired a lot of functional wing players over the last week in Mikal Bridges, Dorian Finney-Smith and Cam Johnson to go along with what remains on the roster, they can tweak around the edges and try to stay competitive. Given the options, it could have been worse.