Kevin Durant was never the Warriors “bus rider” that Charles Barkley tried making him out to be. Durant was the best player and two-time Finals MVP on those Golden State teams that won back-to-back titles, not to mention a figure who ranks higher on the all-time greats list than Barkley does. That would make KD the designated “bus driver,” even if Stephen Curry reigns as the finest outside shooter of all time.

So Durant took the fight to Barkley on Instagram, and his visual retorts were good for some laughs to open an offseason that was supposed to start in June and started instead on a Monday night in late April, when the Nets were swept out of the NBA playoffs before the NHL playoffs even began. So it’s all on the Rangers now — after the Nets, Knicks, Islanders and Devils have been put to bed — before the Yankees and Buck Showalter’s Mets take sole ownership of the city and declare just how serious they are about winning New York’s first championship among the four major pro sports in more than 10 years.

But man, before everyone scurries away from the 20-car pileup that was the local basketball season, the Nets’ first-round meltdown needs to be placed in a big-picture context. This was their moment, their time to make a real mark in the marketplace. They had two healthy future Hall of Famers, and a chance to become the first metropolitan area franchise to win it all since the Giants beat the Belichicks and Bradys out of a second Super Bowl on Feb. 5, 2012.

Instead of making a serious run at the city’s first NBA championship in nearly a half-century, the Nets became the only team out of 16 playoff participants to fail to win a single game. If they used to call the Brooklyn Dodgers “Bums” back in the day, what should they call the Brooklyn Nets now?

Delusional might be a starting point, given the way they talked about all the adversity they faced this season — as if much of that adversity was created by some unseen force, rather than by the Nets themselves. “All of those things off the floor play a role in what happens on the floor as well,” coach Steve Nash said.

Right. And if Kyrie Irving had decided to get vaccinated for the sake of his teammates, and if the Nets had done a better job of managing James Harden, and if they hadn’t expected to get something meaningful from Ben Simmons, well, maybe they would still be on the floor playing, rather than off the floor talking.

But the Nets acted as if they were the only NBA team that had to deal with injuries and COVID-19, and they had a long list of excuses at the ready after getting humiliated by Boston, a team that clearly isn’t built on excuses. Robert Williams III was out there Monday night guarding Durant on the perimeter and giving the Celtics everything he had for 14 minutes, two nights after he gave them 16 minutes and less than a month after he had surgery on a torn meniscus in his knee. Meanwhile, Simmons was quite literally nowhere to be found.

The latest Nets plan appears to be simple: Bring back everyone, including Nash, and benefit from the addition of Simmons and the return of Joe Harris. Never mind that the last time Harris was seen in the playoffs, he was identified as a chief culprit in the seven-game loss to the Bucks last June. And never mind that there’s no guarantee Simmons will be past his physical and mental challenges six months from now, not after sitting out for the past 10 months.

Irving? With no vaccine mandate expected to be in play next season, the Nets will likely sign him to a lucrative extension and hope against hope they get 70 games a pop out of him, a number he has hit three times in his career. Irving will probably find a way to miss a ton of time, because that’s what he does. He disappears while competing teams are doing all that regular-season bonding that the Nets never prioritize.

Monday night, the point guard said that his plans with Durant include “managing this franchise together” alongside owner Joe Tsai and general manager Sean Marks. Irving shouldn’t have said it, just like he shouldn’t have said in the fall of 2020 that he didn’t really see the Nets having a head coach. But he sure as hell said it, even though Nets management seeks and values Durant’s opinion more than it does Irving’s, and it became a thing.

Tsai didn’t respond to a request from The Post for comment on this supposed co-management structure, and on the overall state of his franchise. But with Durant and Irving getting older in a league that keeps getting younger, leaner, meaner and more athletic, it’s quite possible Tsai just saw the best shot he’ll ever get at a title go up in flames.

Long a local afterthought with (strangely enough) considerable national appeal, the Nets didn’t look or act particularly devastated in the hour after the completed sweep. But given that the Knicks and so many other New York teams have been down for so long, the Nets should have been devastated.

The city was theirs for the taking, and might never be again.