Most NBA fans spent the last couple of days focused on perhaps the greatest player of all time, LeBron James, who is now also the most prolific in breaking Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s scoring record last night. That’s with the exception of fans in Brooklyn and Dallas, who both are considering their near and long term trajectory based a recent trade that sent mercurial superstar Kyrie Irving to Dallas in exchange for a couple of players you don’t really care about and three draft picks far enough away in the future that we’ll totally forget about them. Really, this is about the Brooklyn Nets deciding they’ve had enough of the antics and the Dallas Mavericks deciding they’re going to take the moon shot in hopes of winning a title here and now, especially since their current constitution, built largely around scoring machine Luka Doncic, isn’t good enough to get over the hump of NBA pretty good.
It would take the better part of a week to fully document the reasons the Nets finally gave up on Irving. As a brief refresher, recent moments for concern include antisemitic tweets and holding his team hostage because he didn’t want to get the Covid vaccine. All of which has meant Kyrie Irving spent as much time unable to play as his did able to. Add that to his recent demands that Brooklyn sign him to a long-term deal, and all of Kyrie’s considerable upside became absolutely not worth it. Which is why Brooklyn has sent one of the best guards in all of basketball to Dallas and largely destroyed any faint hopes the team had of winning a title, something they never would have considered not that long ago when they assembled their version of the Supergroup – Irving, Kevin Durant, and James Harden. An increasingly frustrated Durant is all that remains of that trio, another example of the best laid plans of mice and men. It's a reminder that while everyone said superteams like the Miami Heat of the LeBron James era and the dynasty of Golden State can’t be stopped, it’s not nearly as easy as it seems. Meaning the whole isn’t always equal to the sum of its parts – sometimes it’s more, sometimes less. But rarely will you know in advance.
That said, there were some indications with Kyrie Irving, who’s brush with fame outside of basketball came in questioning the theory that the Earth is in fact round. He’s questioned theories around Dinosaurs and JFK’s assassination. And generally speaking, he’s developed a reputation for disappearing, which isn’t a great quality for someone in a job that really requires an in-person work environment. Whether you’d use cliched terms like difficult or selfish is up to you, but Kyrie Irving is essentially the Johnny Depp of the basketball world.
He's also equally talented, assuming you like the Pirates of the Caribbean series. And when he’s on his game, he’s also one of the most unstoppable guards in all of basketball – and perhaps the only one who would be available for essentially a song. That’s why he’s headed to Dallas, a franchise that historically hasn’t taken a lot of risks on questionable character. All of which means that the Mavericks are either going to challenge Golden State for the top of the West, or they’ll implode in the Texas version of what’s happened in Brooklyn. And given Doncic’s fiery temperament, particularly compared to a much more temperate Kevin Durant, this could be the most exciting drama out of that city since someone shot JR.
We’ll find out soon enough whether this is a good move, which will be measured by only one criterion – did the Mavericks win the title. If they don’t, it’s a bust. And either way, the Nets can mark this up as a loss, yet another experiment that hasn’t worked in their tortured history. Which also means that they’ll be on the lookout for another star to fill the void and bring a title to the outer borough, something that’s clearly not happening in midtown. And, not for nothing, there does seem to be one star that will be on the market for another team, especially one that will let his son play alongside him. That, of course, is LeBron James. Who, ironically, is probably who the Nets should start talking about.
Keith Strudler is the director of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. You can follow him on twitter at @KeithStrudler
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