A season before signing Kevin Durant and putting the franchise on a path to Tuesday morning’s attempt at reconciliation via public statement, the Nets went 42-40, finished in sixth place in the Eastern Conference and lost in five games in the first round of the playoffs.
Three years later, with Durant and Kyrie Irving in tow, the Nets went 44-38, finished seventh in the East and lost in four games in the first round in the playoffs. If you are reducing their accomplishments to a balance sheet, the main difference between those two seasons would be in the number of negative headlines: Last season’s mess lapped the up-and-coming group of 2018-19.
Everything the franchise has done for the past year — from Irving’s vaccination drama to James Harden being traded to Ben Simmons’ inactivity to Durant’s eventual ultimatum — has turned the Nets into an NBA sideshow rather than the serious title contender they want to be. It is a textbook case of when letting a superstar run the show goes wrong. But Tuesday’s statement gives the Nets a fork in the road.
There’s a template to which Durant could look — and make no mistake, the onus here is very much on Durant — if he views this as more than a face-saving exercise. Fifteen years ago, the Lakers came into the training camp with Kobe Bryant’s status a question mark. Bryant, after clashing with coach Phil Jackson, had spent the summer agitating for a trade to the Bulls.
