Kyrie Irving is back. James Harden has been in three games in his tenure with the Brooklyn Nets. Kevin Durant looks a lot like the best player who defined his career.
So what exactly do we now know about this new, powerful and totally fascinating Brooklyn Nets team?
Absolutely nothing.
Nets’ emotional defeat in the double overtime for the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday night – their first game with the KD-Beard-Kyrie trio playing together – tells us absolutely nothing. The same goes for the two previous games in which Harden and Durant won games, including a huge one against the Milwaukee Bucks, as Irving stayed out for personal reasons.
If you reasonably believe that the Big Three of the Nets are incredibly talented to doubt, there is much at hand to reinforce your position. Harden and KD started together 2-0, Kyrie’s return and whatever wrinkles still need to be corrected, still required double overtime to get dirty, and these three were (mostly) phenomenal together.
Durant had 12 of 25 to 38 points, 12 rebounds and eight assists. Irving fell 37. Harden scored another triple-double, registering a 21-10-12 night.
There are 96 points between them. Scary things.
But if, like me, you have more doubts than confidence in how this mixture of stars will eventually blend, you can squint and still see what worries you. Harden losing a few big shots, on time, in the final stretch. That trio, Kyrie in particular, sometimes playing basketball one-on-one as if he were there without two other world champions – effective thinking that could have been, a sign of possible cracks to come. And, of course, a defeat for a Cleveland Cavaliers team with a fraction of the Nets’ overflowing talent.
Brooklyn is the most fascinating team in the NBA, and what it will end up being – and how it will be judged – in the playoffs months from now remains a Rorschach test. Three games after Harden ended in Brooklyn (2-1), one game after Irving’s return (0-1), and the Nets are still what you thought they were a week ago, when trade went down.
Your combined talent is beyond doubt. Sometimes watching KD and Harden, KD and Irving, KD and Irving and Harden – all possible combinations – was mesmerizing for basketball with an incredibly talented collection of stars. Even so, the Nets’ defense, endurance and ability to win the games in the most difficult way remain open questions, particularly highlighted on Wednesday night, in the defeat by 147 to 135 to the recently expelled Net Jarrett Allen. Allen’s double-double 12-11 doesn’t tell the whole story. He hit big shots, pulled crucial rebounds and, in large parts of the fourth period and in overtime, was the most opportune and important player on the court on this side of Colin Sexton.
He also highlighted who, on the pitch, can be an effective part of what the Nets need outside their scoring trio.
It is a long and difficult process to double several superstars for a single team, a fact reinforced when it happens in the middle of a season – especially with one of these stars leaving his former team through an ugly divorce, and another leaving for a long period for nebulous personal reasons that certainly seem to include open dissent towards his coach.
See the 2010-11 Miami Heat. When LeBron James and Chris Bosh arrived to join Dwyane Wade that year, the Big Three – perhaps the best talent comparison for these Big Three – started with 9-8. I covered that team, and it was nothing but anguish, turbulence and frustration for a large part of that season. And yet the trio ended quite successfully in the years that followed.
Beginnings can be misleading. In both directions. See Harden’s story with the stars he insisted on playing with.
In 2017, he wanted Chris Paul with him in Houston and, as was almost always the case with the Rockets, he got what he wanted. Their start was wonderful. They won their first 14 games together. They were running and were feared. But the story did not end in glory and did not end harmoniously.
Then Harden got what he wanted again: CP3 out, old friend and ex-MVP colleague Russel Westbrook in. Once again, a great start: This time, an 11-3 start and a feeling that all the doubters are tired of two rate stars could successfully coexist, necessary to readjust their thinking. However, this story also ended badly and bitterly.
So here we are. Harden again has what he wants. He, KD and Irving are the most talented NBA trio since the Miami Big Three, at least on paper, and as with many things in the NBA, the joy of some games now equates to any kind of guarantee of what is to come .
Losing to Cleveland is not proof that we, who doubt this version of the Brooklyn Nets, know what we are talking about. But, since they go on a torrid winning tear – and they will – that fact in the same way will not guarantee what is to come in the playoffs.
The Nets are talented. The Nets are full of stars who struggle to get along, or stay happy, or win – usually all three – with other stars. The Nets are the most interesting team in basketball, but they have the biggest question mark. And the Nets, whatever happens in the coming weeks and months, are just beginning to reveal themselves.