Lessons From The Brooklyn Nets Controversy Filled Season

The Nets missed the start of the season, but the electricity went through the Barclays Center. Brooklyn had its first bona fide star in its first appearance for the Nets, one that scored a total of 50, 39, 37 and 33 points in its first 11 games, before moving away from a shoulder bump. However, talent comes at a cost, especially with Irving. League sources say executives, coaches and players who were present during the Irving era in Cleveland and Boston shared negatives with the Nets – his lack of responsiveness and resentment with his coaches, his lack of self-awareness, his teammates his constant defiance of aggressive game plans. his indifference to playing out the ball. But the Nets, many sources say, knew that transporting Irving to the ship was the cost of doing business: No Irving, No Kevin Durant. Surely, the Nets would acquire an eerie talent to mate with Durand. Despite Irving’s erratic behavior, production, shooting ability and finishing ability were among the best in the league (11th in points per chance among 40 players with at least 7,500 shooting attempts from 2013-14, when he started watching the Second Spectrum). But the Nets team, in which Durand also participated, was an example of cohesion – a group of discarded, low-choice and remedial projects that had gone beyond and embraced an effort to build from scratch. Over the next year, several of the core axes of this culture will be tackled to acquire James Harden to form a subgroup. 2 About By the time Harden grumbled to leave Brooklyn, as in Brooklyn, the atmosphere at Sunset Park was very different – and the league took note. Several top league executives claim that strategizing around big star hunting does not have the same impact it once had. They have watched the Celtics in the Kyrie era, and now the Brooklyn Nets, the Los Angeles Lakers and – for now – the LA Clippers believe they could absorb superstars into their existing structures to stifle the results. One unintended consequence of attracting players like Durant and Irving is that a new core often hears a sharp message that management does not fully believe in what is being built, despite years of preaching the value of culture. As much as an organization believes that incoming superstars will adapt to the previous team culture, superstars often do not adapt to cultures. replace them. “Forming a supergroup is something that very, very few organizations can do,” says a senior league official. “And we see that even fewer can do it because superstars are not enough – they have to be the right superstars in the right culture. What this current NBA basketball season shows us is going all-in – – either with cap space or with all your loot – to get two or three of the top talented players in the league and having either low performance infrastructure or a complete lack of roster depth, you are not doing anything good for your body. “ No team serves as a more exciting study than the Nets, who are still looking for a solid lead as they retire from the playoffs. The Lakers did not even go that far. This post-season offers a referendum – is the super team season over? FEW PHENOMENONS DEFINE the era of player empowerment more than the supergroup. After decades of watching many officials move pieces on the chessboard, the talented stars who guide the value of the NBA decided that they would determine where to play and with whom to play. Two of these stars, Durand and Irving, chose to sign with Brooklyn when they hit the vacancy in 2019. The duo’s capture did not require recruitment, something Marx told the media in the days following the signing. Durand and Irving intended to play together somewhere. Durand said in 2019 that he never spoke to the Nets before deciding to come to Brooklyn. Wednesday, April 13 Hornets at the Hawks, 7 p.m. Spurs at the Pelicans, 9:30 p.m. Friday, April 15 East Play-In Game for 8-seed (time TBD) All times Eastern The Nets team that the superstars joined was a story that left you happy. The NBA franchise sells hope or success and in 2019, the Nets had given their fans many of the first with promises of a second. A team starring D’Angelo Russell (exchanged by the Lakers after two seasons), Jarrett Allen (first-round pick just over his second year), Joe Harris (acquired along with cash estimates for selection second round) and Spencer Dinwiddie (who twice resigned from the Bulls before the 2016 season) scored 42 wins and a playoff position as the No. 6 seed. A young front office with Spurs graduate Sean Marks at the helm had finally shaken off the last remnants of the disastrous 2013 trade with the Boston Celtics that destroyed the organization of their draft assets. Marks and head coach Kenny Atkinson helped transform the culture of one of the league’s noisy franchises. The Nets bowed in the first round of the 2019 playoffs with a 4-1 defeat to the Philadelphia 76ers, a decent exit for a team that had won just 69 games in the previous three seasons. However, as pride pervaded this band of superheroes, a reality shaped by the Nets’s ownership and intelligence, sources say: Defenders do not win NBA championships. Successful people do. Join the superstars. Irving averaged 27.4 points and 6.4 assists per game in his first season in Brooklyn, before joining Durand on the injury list. The multitude of specialist doctors of the twin outside the responsibilities of the group enhanced the feeling of their removal from the group, say sources. AP Photo / Brandon Dill IRVING BEGINNED as the lone superstar on the floor as Durant spent his first season with the Nets sidelined by a torn Achilles tendon he suffered in the 2019 Final. Irving eventually played just 20 of the Nets’ 64 games. before undergoing surgery at the end of the season. NBA players usually operate with some degree of isolation from the team when working on detox, but Irving and Durand had a number of outside physicians and personal trainers that enhanced their sense of exclusion from the Nets, they say. sources. Atkinson had some difficulty managing the superstars from afar. According to many sources, the initial assignment to the center became a source of internal controversy, with DeAndre Jordan the preferred choice for veterinarians, while Atkinson favored the flowery Allen. Sources describe the situation as a mediation battle between the useless Nets before 2019 and the new branding. As much as the existing Brooklyn core acknowledged that the existence of transcendental talents would drive away the offense, the cultural transition “exterminated them a little,” according to a source familiar with locker room dynamics. Durand was initially impressed by Atkinson’s approach to his coaching skills that came to Brooklyn, but as the Nets withered, sources say he was increasingly overwhelmed by the team’s innocent play. Although many sources familiar with the Nets’ internal machinations say that reports that Atkinson was fired in March 2020 under the direct command of Durand and Irving are far-fetched, the momentum leading to Atkinson’s death in Brooklyn has been updated. largely from the new composition of the roster. Admire him, hate him, pity him or confuse him, Irving was a very complicated piece in this composition. A Nets source says that it is not so much an individual act that burdens the team or the organization, but Irving as a whole: “It is always something”, no matter how productive it is when it fits. One and a half years after the signing of Durand and Irving, the team acquired James Harden, forming a trio that the Nets hoped could lead a dynasty. Thirteen months later, amid internal strife and growing losses, Harden was exchanged. Emilee Chinn / Getty Images The acquisition of James Harden from Brooklyn, 18 months after the signing of Durand and Irving, was the absolute agreement of Fausti. Replacing Jarrett Allen, who made the All-Star team this season, and Caris Levert, the team’s 13th defense got worse 1.4 points per 100 possessions and dropped to 22nd place. The Nets bowed in Milwaukee in the conference semifinals. By comparison, the Nets’ brief effort in seven games against the Bucks without Irving for the last three games and with Harden absent in Games 2, 3 and 4, could be the culmination of Harden’s time in Brooklyn. Sources say that much of the resentment between Harden and the Nets began in September when he arrived at the training camp out of shape. Durand understood Harden’s difficult position in Houston as a man in need of a new setting, but he also tacitly expected his former teammate to devote himself to preparing and taking care of himself when he came to seek a title in Brooklyn, according to source close to both. stars. With Irving’s condition already in flux due to his reluctance to get vaccinated, Durand was surprised in the first weeks of the season by Harden’s lack of explosiveness and sluggish play, which largely contributed to Harden being out of form, such as did and the consequent problems with the femoral thighs. Harden, sources say, found Durand gradient and confident. The two never resolved the conflict and there was little that teammates, coach Steve Nash or Marks could do to mediate. With each passing week, Harden became more …