There’s an old saw in sports: Sometimes the best trades are the ones you don’t make.

To which, given how this NBA season has unfolded, especially over the past month, we should now add: Sometimes the best trade requests are the ones you don’t honor.

After Kevin Durant asked to be traded this offseason, the Nets responded with the equivalent of the “We’ll look into it and circle back to you” email, setting a super-steep asking price (which was their right!) and essentially playing four corners until reaching a co-branded truce with their superstar. The team then spent the early portions of the season in various modes of embarrassment over the firing of Steve Nash as head coach, their flirtation with the disgraced Ime Udoka as his potential replacement and, most prominently, the whole Kyrie Irving balagan. All while playing sub-.500 basketball.

Now they’re the hottest team in the NBA, and quietly — because sometimes it feels as if the Nets are least relevant when they’re playing actual basketball, even if they’re playing it very well — beginning to resemble the title contender they were rumored to be.