Kyrie Irving and the Nets, it’s now over! The huge project that linked Uncle Drew and the Brooklyn franchise will not have resisted the almost perpetual bazaar of the last season and the beginning of the current one. Finally ? A very dull record, with a clear title opportunity but nothing very bright afterwards. We take stock.
Alright, where to start. Maybe from the start. When Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving signed with the Nets – accompanied by DeAndre Jordan, but we’re going to say we don’t care – hope was great, very great on the other side of the Hudson River . Two All-Star players, already titled, who want to write their history in one of the biggest NBA markets, still in search of its first trophy.
A golden scenario on paper, which unfortunately will not have been until the end of the script. From the “Irvingesque” point of view of the story, the balance sheet of three and a half years of basketball in the state of New York is not really what he expected and what we expected either.
The Brooklyn Nets are trading Kyrie Irving to the Dallas Mavericks, per @wojespn pic.twitter.com/6rM7TlrQ5O
— Sports Illustrated (@SInow) February 5, 2023
Statistical contributions? They reveal little, because they remain extremely good. Averaged 27.1 points, 5.8 assists and 4.8 rebounds in 143 games. Nothing that shocks you? Yeah, 143 games in three and a half seasons, it’s still light. Too little attendance to hope to create something strong over time. We could also extrapolate this sentence to all the major players of this franchise. Injuries, stories alongside basketball have eaten away at Kai’s time in Brooklyn.
To start ? This famous case of the vaccine which laid the preludes to the departure of James Harden last winter. Two months away from the field, not being able to help the friends who will also find themselves deprived of Kevin Durant a little later. Too much for The Beard, who prefers to go to the Sixers. The end of the season will only be a way of the cross before getting smashed by the Celtics – his former team – in the first round of the Playoffs. And the feeling of an “abandonment” of the rest of the team by the leader who remains in the way for many fans.
The affair of the anti-Semitic remarks at the start of the season was also a complicated passage for the franchise. Unjustifiable words, which screwed up the mess in the start of regular Nets. Nevertheless, a good big month of December was marked by fabulous basketball, before Kevin Durant went to consult nurse Joëlle again.
What could have triggered the desire to leave for Kyrie Irving? Perhaps the turbo slap inflicted by Boston in the middle of last week. Nets amorphous, incapable of anything when talking about basketball. The smell of an end to the season still failed, while for the 30-year-old leader, three and a half seasons spent skating now seem to be too much.
The year 2020-21 could have been the right one, except for one size. Everyone in shape, an unfortunate twist of fate… but that’s also the NBA. This defeat on which the group should have built turned into a bad memory of an opportunity that will probably never come again. Too free electron, Kyrie will not have met expectations.
No title, a passage that will be remembered more for the extra-basketball setbacks than for the big orange ball evenings. A failure in many respects, whether for the Nets who sacrificed a team with a fantastic heart to bring him in, as for him individually who has not made an impression in three and a half years.
Sources : ESPN, Bleacher Report
