LAS VEGAS — Last season, both Nets coach Kenny Atkinson and general manager Sean Marks said their players were their best recruiters.
Never was that proven more true than Sunday, when they helped lure Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and DeAndre Jordan to Brooklyn.
The trio had been talking throughout the season about playing together on the Knicks. But The Post reported that Nets guard Spencer Dinwiddie had been playing the long game in recruiting Irving.
Apparently that long game stretches back to last year. The New York Times pointed to a semester-long seminar at Harvard Business School called “Crossover Into Business” that both players attended last fall. The pair are shown in a picture shared on Instagram by professor Anita Elberse, who taught the seminar.
Dinwiddie’s recruiting efforts may have been the single most important assist he ever has made for the Nets. But he wasn’t the only player working the back channels.
Jared Dudley was a free agent, unsure if he’d return to Brooklyn. As it turns out, he won’t, but he still sung the organization’s praises to Jordan, who began to be swayed from the Knicks to the Nets.
“Hey, DeAndre’s a good friend of mine. I told him all the good, it’s 95% good over there,” Dudley said on ESPN’s “The Woj Pod” podcast. “It’s one of the best practice facilities in the league. You can live in the city, because most players want to live in New York City and go there, they don’t have to drive an hour to Westchester, to the Knicks’ practice facility. They have one of the best training staffs over there. It’s probably triple the size, more than any [other team], 15-20 trainers from Australia to Canada, they bring them from all over.
“Sean Marks does a phenomenal job. Great player development. Kenny Atkinson’s a hard worker. They’re missing a superstar, that’s what they were missing. … You’ve got to have some of that. I told [Jordan] that. He was talking about the Knicks. Kevin Durant’s out, the Knicks are going to be bad. Let’s be honest, the Knicks are going to be bad.”
When the Nets landed Durant, Irving and Jordan on Sunday night, Dinwiddie posted a picture of “The A-Team” character Hannibal Smith smoking a victory cigar. The character’s catch phrase was “I love it when a plan comes together.”
And, like Dudley, Dinwiddie didn’t spare the Knicks any shade, following up with a post that read: “Oh, and @nyknicks fans I didn’t forget about y’all either,” along with a trio of emojis laughing at the Nets’ rivals.