In Brooklyn, there was once a saying, “Wait till next year,” as people eagerly anticipated the Dodgers finally beating the Yankees in the World Series.
It eventually happened in 1955, just a few years before the Dodgers left for Hollywood, leaving a void in the borough.
When the Nets signed Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving in 2019, they had the opportunity to fill that void and deliver the first NBA title for a metropolitan area team since 1973.
The Knicks had been struggling, losing 284 games in the previous five years, and their ownership and management were in disarray.
The Nets had a clear path to victory, having landed the biggest available stars, while the Knicks were forced to settle for Julius Randle. The Nets were the desired destination for the elites, not Manhattan, and they were set to end the city’s title drought. They even added James Harden to their already powerful roster.
However, when they showed up at the Garden for a game, they suffered a crushing defeat, surrendering 47 points in the first quarter and 81 points by the half. They lost the game 142-118, surrendering any hope of stopping the Knicks from controlling the basketball market in the coming years.
Jalen Brunson, who was recently acquired by the Knicks, had a remarkable impact on the team, scoring 30 of his 39 points against the Nets in the first half of the game.
Brunson is committed to big-picture thinking and focused on winning, which will be attractive to veteran stars looking for a new home. The Nets, on the other hand, are overstocked with good-but-not-great perimeter players and are sinking toward the deep end of the play-in pool, having lost four straight games.
The Nets missed their chance to prove that stars could thrive in their organization and elevate Barclays Center above the Garden as New York’s preferred basketball stage. They had the Knicks down and bloodied, but they let them back up, and it remains to be seen if they will ever recover from that defeat.
»Nets misses chance to prove that stars could thrive in organization«
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