The Brooklyn Nets may finally be in rebuilding mode, but rebuilding the franchise has been a long time coming.
The reason the Nets are even here is because they signed both Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant in free agency in 2019 and won’t open a championship window. The two superstars teamed up with hopes of raising a banner in Brooklyn, though the era ended with both players being traded and finding new homes.
Both trades were re-standardized The most recent re-evaluation of Bleacher Report The biggest trade in the last half decade. The Nets’ trades involving both Irving and Durant were both re-evaluated with letter grades.
Both trades helped set up the Nets’ current rebuild, but how has Bleacher Report graded trades over time? The first of the two standardized was the trade that sent Durant to the Phoenix Suns.
Bleacher Report earned the Durant trade to the Nets an „A++++” because their haul ultimately helped set up Brooklyn’s net draft capital for the future.
„Brooklyn’s superteam structure has completely unraveled by the time the Durant trade is negotiated. Getting that much for a hapless 34-year-old looking to move to a team was always going to be a big deal,” Bleacher Report wrote. „The Nets made it a big hit.”
Brooklyn-bound Michael Bridges was the prize of Durant’s out-of-contract deal, but the Nets then traded the forward to the New York Knicks to sweeten the pot of draft picks.
„All in all, the Nets essentially turned KD and two trades into seven additional first-round picks, rights back to their own first pair, another two trades and Cam Johnson,” Bleacher Report continued. „…Tears are often romanticized, but Brooklyn wouldn’t have it any other way. It created a situation that could upend both its present and its future, and then some.”
Moving Durant became a sideline of moves that helped the Nets position themselves well enough to eventually return to contention, but the Irving trade wasn’t considered as much. Bleacher Report gave the Nets a „B” for their package that returned Irving to the Dallas Mavericks.
Even if the Irving trade isn’t out of the question, it probably won’t hurt much as Brooklyn is now well-positioned to accumulate young talent.
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