The Nets’ championship dreams have gone up in smoke, torched by forced trades of Kyrie Irving and now Kevin Durant.
With James Harden dealt away a year ago this week, the Big 3 is dead. Some hot-take purveyors have opined that the Nets are in a worse place than when GM Sean Marks took over seven years ago next Saturday.
Others suggest they’re an updated version of the 2019 playoff squad that Durant and Irving walked into, before they swapped Brooklyn grit for Brooklyn glitz. So which is it? How do the post-Durant Nets compare with the pre-Durant ones?
Talent
Unlike the team Marks inherited that was a cellar-dweller with no draft picks, by 2019 he’d built them into a playoff squad. But ignoring the back of the bench and just comparing the cores of each, this Mikal Bridges-Nic Claxton unit has an edge.
