The NBA season started about 3 weeks ago and there have been a lot of fun stories. For example, the Utah Jazz, San Antonio Spurs, and Oklahoma City Thunder are playing very good basketball and winning games, the Cavs are awesome, the Suns have seemingly recovered from the embarrassing game 7 loss, and others. There are bad stories of teams not playing well, like how I expected the Timberwolves and Clippers to be awesome and they are not looking awesome, or how the Lakers still stink, though they have won 2 in a row. However, here we are, here I am, writing about a disgusting anti-semitic tweet Kyrie Irving sent and how the Brooklyn Nets are seemingly over looking a huge investigation the Boston Celtics had and might be hiring Ime Udoka as head coach even with the accusations of sexual harassment. It’s November, we should be talking about basketball but here we are talking about the mess in Brooklyn… yet again.
Let’s start with Kyrie. Irving, the 1st overall pick in the 2011 NBA Draft, hit one of the biggest shots in NBA history and delivered the biggest moment in the history of long tortured Cleveland sports. However, is that what Kyrie is going to be remembered for at this point or is it the distraction he has been? The tweet Irving sent was the link to a movie called “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America.” Now, I have not seen the movie or read the book but there are definitely anti-semitic ideals talked about, anti-semitism is hatred towards Jewish people because they are Jewish. This is the kind of thing that simply cannot happen, can’t have it in the league or really anywhere. Hate is hate, no matter how it is displayed and it is unacceptable for anyone to post about stuff like this. The press conference on Saturday night after Brooklyn’s loss to the Indiana Pacers was also problematic. For Kyrie to not understand that what he tweets versus what someone like me or you tweets is very different. He has 4.6 million twitter followers, I have 87 (follow me @janderson22_, #roadto90followers), so for him to say, what he tweets is the same as what I tweet is wrong, so many more people are going to see what he tweets compared to what I tweet. There is clearly a lack of understanding here by Irving on what he did wrong. The Nets finally suspended Irving for a minimum of 5 games on Thursday without pay and he apologized on Instagram, though the post was so late one has to wonder if he meant it.
We have no idea what Ime Udoka did to get himself suspended, essentially fired, by the Boston Celtics. As a result, the Nets hiring Udoka is not a good look, because while we know there was a consensual relationship, that is not the extent of what happened, based of what has been reported we also are aware there was sexual harassment involved. With these facts, questioning if the Nets did their due diligence on Udoka is fair, as it has never been reported on exactly what happened. Although, the news of the Udoka hiring was on Tuesday and the Nets have not given a formal announcement on the hiring yet, so I am starting to wonder if they are going to follow through with that and it would not surprise me if they did not end up hiring Udoka. There are still a lot of details to settle whether Udoka gets the job or not.
A Kevin Durant trade feels inevitable at this point. This is not his mess, blame him for last season fine, he was key in designing that roster but this season, I don’t blame Durant and do not think you should either. Ben Simmons has been a shell of himself and it is a wonder how he can get back to the elite player he once was, Kyrie Irving has gone off the rails and may never play for Brooklyn again, the whole thing is a mess and Brooklyn’s big ticket to salvage some of the picks they lost when they traded all of theirs to Houston for James Harden is a Durant trade. The team that jumps out to me remains the Phoenix Suns, where Kevin Durant said he wanted to be traded when he asked out on July 31st. It’s time to find a new home for Deandre Ayton, both he and the team need a fresh start, so even if Brooklyn does not want him, I am sure there is a 3rd team that would be interested. Ayton, Jae Crowder (if he is not traded beforehand), and Cam Johnson make enough money to make the salaries match. With unprotected picks in 2024, 2026, and 2028 and pick swaps in 2025, 2027, and 2029 in the trade. Brooklyn probably prefers Mikal Bridges to Ayton and maybe that is who they demand in a trade because though Bridges makes less than Ayton, the trade still works based on the NBA’s salary matching rules. Other teams that could get involved are the Toronto Raptors, Portland Trail Blazers, and Dallas Mavericks.
The Brooklyn Nets are a mess and it seems like the end of this era is clearly coming. The question that is being asked is, should the Nets front office regret this whole experiment with the stars? The answer is absolutely not, people talk about the 2018-19 Nets and how good their chemistry was but that was a .500 team that got smacked in the first round by the Philadelphia 76ers, the upside of that team was not very high. Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving gave them a chance to win a championship, and when they traded for Harden they were considered favorites. In 2021, they arguably would have won it if James Harden’s hamstring didn’t get hurt and Kyrie didn’t sprain his ankle. They were inches away from the Conference Finals, and taking out the eventual champs in the process, even with the injuries. So while yes, the ending has been a disaster and it will have been a failed experiment, I think the risk was worth it because if they did not take the risk, they probably would have been stuck in the middle.
The Brooklyn Nets are a mess and it is time for them to blow it up. Signing Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, and DeAndre Jordan back in the summer of 2019 and then trading for James Harden in January 2021 turned out to be a failure, but it was still worth the risk. There have been mistakes, some that involve basketball and others do not involve basketball but it was worth it. It was worth it because they could have won a championship because every time you have the opportunity to assemble the 3 guys they assembled you do it, that is how good those guys are and that is how good this team could have been.
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