Looking back, it’s clear that the Brooklyn Nets’ decision to form a Big Three in 2021 wasn’t a smart one.
The trio of Durant, Irving, and Harden looked unbeatable on paper, but they failed miserably in their quest to win the NBA championship. What’s funny is that people forgot about all the good times the team had.
Maybe if a few things had gone differently, we would have looked at them differently today.
That’s at least what Kyrie thinks when he spoke about the Nets during his recent stream. In fact, he says he’ll always remember that first season they had together when Brooklyn played like a frontrunner to win the championship.
“You know, I get injured, James [Harden] gets injured in those playoffs, we don’t know what could’ve happened. We only played a few games together and we were 13-3, I believe. It’s sad when we look at this time to say it was a failure without a proper context for how all of this ended up happening…Those playoffs, if KD’s foot doesn’t hit the line, or things work out differently, maybe we’re sitting here multi-time champions, a few of us got MVPs. We can go into hypotheticals, but it was a tough environment for all of us,” Kyrie stated.
Closer to a championship than it seemed
The 2021 Nets were a second seed in the Eastern Conference with a 48-24 record, in a season that was shortened to 72 regular-season games due to COVID-19 pandemic.
In the playoffs, they dominated the Boston Celtics in five games before facing off against the future champions, the Milwaukee Bucks, where KD’s foot on the line that Irving mentioned happened.
It transpired in Game 7, when Durant hit what appeared to be a crazy turnaround three over P.J. Tucker to give the Nets the lead with one second remaining, just to have the replays show his foot was on the line.
Leave a Reply