Speaker 1: Come on, you're listening to heat Check from Tristan crick
Speaker 1: Odyssey's official NBA podcast. Find that wherever you get your
Speaker 1: podcasts and live all throughout free agency, Summer League, and beyond.
Speaker 1: If you can't get passed a live forth without huge moves,
Speaker 1: huge signings going on, I need them. I need them
Speaker 1: like air, and I need them yesterday. That's all that's
Speaker 1: all there that I need to say about that. So
Speaker 1: let's move over forward to the Kevin Durant saga, because
Speaker 1: we have to talk about it, even though it's everywhere.
Speaker 1: It's pretty surreal to think that Kevin Durant has finally
Speaker 1: asked to be traded officially, that he said, Hey, I'm sorry, guys,
Speaker 1: this thing's not working out. Is this the most monumental
Speaker 1: trade in NBA history? Trade request in NBA history? This
Speaker 1: would be like if Kobe Bryant asked out publicly, because
Speaker 1: we know we tried to leave LA, but nobody knew
Speaker 1: until after the fact. Right. It's bigger than Harden, It's
Speaker 1: bigger than Paul George, It's bigger than Kawhi. To me,
Speaker 1: the only thing on that level would be if you're
Speaker 1: honest or Steph asked out right now, and that would
Speaker 1: be absolutely insane. And what's nuts is that the people
Speaker 1: in Brooklyn and fans of the Nets just don't seem
Speaker 1: to care whatsoever. It's like they're so scarred of bad
Speaker 1: things happening to them that it's just like another Tuesday.
Speaker 1: It's just really like nothing is going on. You glipped.
Speaker 1: It's like you blink your eye. You have three All
Speaker 1: Stars and the top fifteen players of our current day,
Speaker 1: and now you have zero zero them, and then you've
Speaker 1: got Ben Simmons and you're hopefully going to get some
Speaker 1: picks back that makes sense for you. For Kevin Durant.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is so unprecedented. It literally hijacked all
Speaker 1: a free agency to the point where I think moves
Speaker 1: aren't even being made for DeAndre Ayton because we know
Speaker 1: that they're attached or connected to Kevin Durant, right, And
Speaker 1: what should have been a discussion about like Bradley Beal
Speaker 1: or Levine or Ayton turned into just chaos, mass chaos.
Speaker 1: Wendy reported that over half the NBA has been looking
Speaker 1: to get Kevin Durant, and that was before free agency
Speaker 1: actually began. We discussed this as a possibility about two
Speaker 1: weeks ago, and rather than give you lots of speculation,
Speaker 1: I think I'm gonna do something that we haven't seen yet.
Speaker 1: Outline really quickly how we got here, going back to
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen, really when all of this began. What began
Speaker 1: you might ask the same thing that's happening right now,
Speaker 1: the demise and crumbling of the Nets franchise as we
Speaker 1: know it. And it's not that very long after they
Speaker 1: made that, the same disastrous trade that they do it again. Right.
Speaker 1: It was KG, it was Paul Pierce, it was Williams,
Speaker 1: it was Brook Lopez, it was Joe Johnson. And if
Speaker 1: you look back onto how that went down, it's pretty
Speaker 1: informative because history happens once as a tragedy and twice
Speaker 1: as farce. Because the second Big three of Kyrie Katie
Speaker 1: Harden is connected actually the first big three in my opinion,
Speaker 1: of KG, Pierce and Williams. So okay, so set your
Speaker 1: time machine back to twenty thirteen. Bron the first attempt
Speaker 1: by this franchise to build a big three. They wanted
Speaker 1: to counter the heat. Stupid, stupid. You should have known
Speaker 1: that Lebron James would go somewhere else, because that's what
Speaker 1: he does, he runs from the grind switches teams. So
Speaker 1: Nett receive Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, DJ White, Jason Terry.
Speaker 1: Celtics received scrubs and a bunch of picks twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, writes to swap twenty seventeen, and twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: In twenty sixteen, that pick becomes Jalen Brown. In twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: that pick becomes Jason Tatum. In twenty eighteen, the Celtics
Speaker 1: had the number eight pick in the draft. That pick
Speaker 1: gets rerouted to Cleveland as a part of the trade,
Speaker 1: that becomes Kyrie Irving. I cannot articulate to you how
Speaker 1: bad that trade was for the Nets, and how bad
Speaker 1: this trade is for the Nets. What looked like, well
Speaker 1: the hardened trade mostly what looked like it was going
Speaker 1: to be Kyrie and Katie and a bunch of young
Speaker 1: players right with a great culture turn into no players
Speaker 1: besides what they get for Kevin Durant, no draft picks
Speaker 1: besides what they get for KD, and a whole lot
Speaker 1: of chaos. Everyone wants to give their take on who
Speaker 1: to blame. Is it Kevin, is it Kai? Is it Hardened?
Speaker 1: Is it all three of them, and to me, I
Speaker 1: think you got to look back to how this all began,
Speaker 1: which is the mentality of getting superstars to win titles.
Speaker 1: If you look at it as a family, I think
Speaker 1: Josai is essentially the father. He's made his billions because
Speaker 1: of Ali Baba, a Chinese company, the Chinese Amazon and
Speaker 1: Jack ma currently who started Ali Baba, has a net
Speaker 1: worth of nine billion. Josi. He bought the nets from
Speaker 1: a Russian oligarch named Mikhail Prokrooff in twenty nineteen. You
Speaker 1: probably remember proker Off because he was the one who
Speaker 1: did the Josi thing and crashed the nets the first
Speaker 1: time around. And he did this by not only throwing
Speaker 1: out huge contracts, but by making sure those star players
Speaker 1: get taken care of in every way possible. That's what
Speaker 1: Josai decided he wanted to do, is to make a
Speaker 1: very concerted effort into turning the franchise into a funhouse
Speaker 1: of NBA teams to attract star players don't want to
Speaker 1: be there. Cyan Heritage Sean Marks as GM. Sean Marks
Speaker 1: was hired in twenty sixteen and told pro Kraft he
Speaker 1: was an idiot. Yo, you're an idiot. For trying to
Speaker 1: do this win now thing. He saw the franchise implode
Speaker 1: and hit just twenty one wins, and he said, I
Speaker 1: was clear in our meeting that if you're looking for
Speaker 1: a quick fixed guy like you did before, that I'm
Speaker 1: not the guy for you. Hired Kenny Atkinson. Sean Marks.
Speaker 1: He had this slow, methodical mentality about how to build
Speaker 1: a team. The Nets became a succeed. They had Jared Allen,
Speaker 1: they had Spencer Dinwiddie, they had Joe Harris, they had
Speaker 1: Caris LeVert. He turned Joe Harris into something Torrian Prince
Speaker 1: D'Angelo Russell. This team was an absolute blast to watch.
Speaker 1: And then when Joe Side bought the team from broker Off,
Speaker 1: win Now baby was back on the table. So where
Speaker 1: do you think this mandate came from? Given the fact
Speaker 1: that Sean Marks told proker Off, I'm not all about
Speaker 1: win now for sure. Joe Side right, and from the
Speaker 1: beginning it was like, let's go out and get big
Speaker 1: free agents. Kyrie KD came in twenty nineteen, even though
Speaker 1: Durant was out the full year. He gets his full salary.
Speaker 1: Kyrie played twenty games and then went to the bubble
Speaker 1: and was like, Yeah, I can't play in the bubble.
Speaker 1: Let's start our own league. Let's not even go to
Speaker 1: the bubble. Kyrie had Atkinson and kd had Atkinson. They
Speaker 1: pushed him out the door because they didn't want to
Speaker 1: run wind sprints right. Just four days before coronavirus, four
Speaker 1: days before Adam Silver shut down the league. They fired
Speaker 1: Atkinson four days Coach David Fizdale said this about the firing.
Speaker 1: When it comes to players with power, your front office
Speaker 1: has to be really strong. Your culture has to be
Speaker 1: strong to whether disgruntled players tell them kids to fuck off,
Speaker 1: settle down. Their little hot heads can go sit in
Speaker 1: a corner somewhere. We're staying with Kenny Atkinson. He got
Speaker 1: us to that place. He also says this, you have
Speaker 1: to be a certain amount of support for your coach
Speaker 1: when things get turbulent. They wanted to appease those star players,
Speaker 1: so they allowed Kenny Atkinson to go out the door,
Speaker 1: and then to choose the coach. They chose their teacher
Speaker 1: in Steve Nash. Star players didn't want a hard, driving,
Speaker 1: developmentally focused coach when things weren't smooth from day one,
Speaker 1: How could they be smooth? Rock Kevin Durant out a
Speaker 1: full year, KD played twenty games a pandemic kit. What
Speaker 1: are we talking about? No gelling time? As as Kevin
Speaker 1: Durant and Kyrie Irving said, we just didn't have enough
Speaker 1: time to gel Give us some time. By the way,
Speaker 1: fast forward, Papa Joe decides to do the same thing
Speaker 1: Prokaroff had done in twenty thirteen as an aside, Like
Speaker 1: I said, Prokarov said, the Paul Pierce Kevin Garnett deal
Speaker 1: was one of the biggest business regrets he's ever had
Speaker 1: in his whole life. Pro Karoff a Russian oligarch. When
Speaker 1: he says a trade is so bad that it's one
Speaker 1: of the biggest things that haunts him at night. A
Speaker 1: Russian billionaire, that's his biggest regret. Do you know what
Speaker 1: type of moves you need and deals you need to
Speaker 1: make in order to become a billionaire in Russia? As
Speaker 1: my mom would say, slit their mother's throat for a
Speaker 1: loaf of bread? Do you know what you need to
Speaker 1: do to be a billionaire? That's the thing he regrets most,
Speaker 1: not all of the things that you need to do
Speaker 1: in order to acquire the billions in Russia. Nope, those
Speaker 1: five first round picks or whatever it was that they
Speaker 1: had to give to the Boston Celtics. It was that.
Speaker 1: But this is not as bad as the move that
Speaker 1: Joe Side demanded. So he lets the kids choose the teacher,
Speaker 1: a guy who is great, a guy who's a two
Speaker 1: time MVP, never coached a fucking second in his life,
Speaker 1: not once. They went from the strongest player development coach
Speaker 1: in the league to a guy who's never developed anything
Speaker 1: outside of a soccer ball, a guy who could be
Speaker 1: commentating in Edmonton Oilers game tomorrow. No shape, that's facts.
Speaker 1: How much respect did Steve Nash get when he entered
Speaker 1: the league? None? Zero. Immediately, Kyrie Irving told the world
Speaker 1: I could be coached. I could be coached one day,
Speaker 1: KD could be coach. We all pretty much coaches like
Speaker 1: we're all players, former players. Who cares d'An Toni's here.
Speaker 1: He lets us run everything we want. It's all good.
Speaker 1: Turns out it wasn't all good. Maybe you don't need
Speaker 1: a coach for a seven time All Star, but a
Speaker 1: guy right out of the sec in Cam Johnson, Cam Smith,
Speaker 1: Cam Smith get all the cams confused. He needs to
Speaker 1: be told what to do. And there's nobody there to
Speaker 1: shepherd him. Guys like old Andre Drummonds of the world,
Speaker 1: the LaMarcus Audiers of the world, the Blake Griffins of
Speaker 1: the world, they need coaching to figure out their place
Speaker 1: in the ecosystem. If they didn't need coaches to figure
Speaker 1: out their place in the ecosystem, and they could consistently
Speaker 1: be good, they wouldn't be role players. They'd be stars.
Speaker 1: Role players and veterans need coaching. If Gary Payton, let
Speaker 1: me ask you this, if Gary Payton is second could
Speaker 1: be and was who he turned out to with Kenny
Speaker 1: Atkinson and Golden State, he wouldn't have been sitting on
Speaker 1: any ten day contracts. He would have been Gary Payton Second,
Speaker 1: making ten million dollars a year as a role player
Speaker 1: in this league. Without that, he'd be still on his couch.
Speaker 1: In other words, the kids need rules. The kids need structure.
Speaker 1: We saw it when Russell Westbrook went to LA and
Speaker 1: there was no rules. Disaster, chaos, And we know star
Speaker 1: players make terrible GMS. Case in point. Early on the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty season, James Harden Kevin Durant in the summer
Speaker 1: start plotting. Harden decides he wants out of Houston. Kevin
Speaker 1: Durant knows Harden from days in Okay, see as you know,
Speaker 1: and you might think hardens to blame too, but I
Speaker 1: actually think Carden was the first one to us out
Speaker 1: the things were bad in Brooklyn, like I need to
Speaker 1: get out of here. This is a dumpster fire, like
Speaker 1: the Titanic is ready to go. So in our Brooklyn
Speaker 1: Nuts family analogy, do you think of James Harden's like
Speaker 1: the cousin who came to live there for the summer
Speaker 1: and thought maybe he'd stay for the school year and realized,
Speaker 1: like no, I got to go back home. And we
Speaker 1: know how the hard and trade went and how it
Speaker 1: all evolved, because we've talked about it a lot. But
Speaker 1: Kyrie went on walk about and Nash had zero explanation.
Speaker 1: He had not spoken to Kyrie. He didn't say there
Speaker 1: was anything wrong with it. He was so afraid to
Speaker 1: talk smack about his star player that we all knew
Speaker 1: that Steve Nash had no idea what the right moves were.
Speaker 1: Kevin Durant was hurt in that season. He played only
Speaker 1: thirty five regular season games, which is exactly how many
Speaker 1: games Harden played. As well. Kyrie sprained his ankle, as
Speaker 1: we know, and they were one shoeprint away from going
Speaker 1: to the Eastern Conference finals, probably the finals. And that
Speaker 1: was the amazing thing, right because the fact that Kevin
Speaker 1: Durant played fifty three minutes in that finals game is
Speaker 1: all you need to know about how Steve Nash manages
Speaker 1: his rotations, how close they came with those three at
Speaker 1: least somewhat in jail, a lot of quick fixes trying
Speaker 1: to get Harden a fix that turned out to not
Speaker 1: be so quick after all. Right, fast forward to this season.
Speaker 1: Because Kyrie doesn't get the vaccination and the state mandates,
Speaker 1: and we don't really need to go into that, he
Speaker 1: only plays. Also, Kevin Durant signs the max deal thinking
Speaker 1: Kyrie Irving's gonna get it. He signed it thinking that
Speaker 1: same summer Kyrie and him were going to be lined
Speaker 1: up with that extensions and that Harden was going to
Speaker 1: be lined up with an extension. No, no, baby, no no.
Speaker 1: Kyrie's offer gets rescinded. Harden pushes it off and says,
Speaker 1: I need to wait to see if I'm gonna stay
Speaker 1: for the school year. Summertime still here, folks, I need
Speaker 1: to just sit back and wait and I think Harden
Speaker 1: was the only one who saw what the fuck was happening,
Speaker 1: because multiple times that presser is Hardened saying to the world,
Speaker 1: I'm going to force Kyrie Irving to get vaccinated in myself.
Speaker 1: Kyrie Irving comes back halftime and hard and is like,
Speaker 1: this is fucking outrageous, Like I don't know what's going on.
Speaker 1: Andrew Wiggins, the Canadian, he's getting vaccinated. Why can't Kyrie,
Speaker 1: I don't know what is going on. Get me out
Speaker 1: of here. I need my hookah, I need a new jersey,
Speaker 1: and I need to go up the street to Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing. You can't put all your eggs
Speaker 1: in one basket with no supporting cast. You can't hire
Speaker 1: an inexperienced coach and expect him not only to navigate egos,
Speaker 1: which he did, okay, but also coach a bug vevia
Speaker 1: young players and veteran minimum retreads, and then also be
Speaker 1: lying to the media simultaneous about all the crazy chaos
Speaker 1: that was happening behind the scenes. So then they trade
Speaker 1: Harden for Ben Simmons, who's not played a game in
Speaker 1: I don't know twelve over twelve months now. Then, of
Speaker 1: course the next flame out in the first round. And
Speaker 1: now Jo sighs done with Kyrie? Why are you done
Speaker 1: with Kyrie e? Right now? You did everything to put
Speaker 1: him in a place to enable him to think that
Speaker 1: he could be the GM, that he could be the coach,
Speaker 1: that he cannot play games, that he could sit out,
Speaker 1: that he can go on talk about he can wear
Speaker 1: no master his sister's birthday party and get suspended, all
Speaker 1: of these things that you gave him the power to do.
Speaker 1: And now you're like, he's fucking around with my money.
Speaker 1: And after that, it's clear that things need to be
Speaker 1: changed and you need to put in some rules into place,
Speaker 1: and Kyrie Irving's not really wanting those rules to be
Speaker 1: in place. Daddy wants the kids now to have a curfew,
Speaker 1: can they now? Can you really blame them for saying,
Speaker 1: we haven't had a curfew this whole time? Fuck off,
Speaker 1: We'll come home when we want to come home. So
Speaker 1: who's to blame everyone? But mostly Joe side, Mostly Joe side,
Speaker 1: because Kevin lobby to get rid of Kenny right, Kevin
Speaker 1: lobby to bring in Steve nash Right, he lobbied to
Speaker 1: trade the whole roster and a bunch of first round
Speaker 1: picks for an out of shape former superstar who you
Speaker 1: don't know if he can actually perform, and then when
Speaker 1: it goes south, he then lobbies to be traded. But
Speaker 1: you can say no every step of the way to
Speaker 1: those things. You can say no to getting rid of Atkinson,
Speaker 1: you can say no to Nash, you can say no
Speaker 1: to trading for Harden, and you can still have this
Speaker 1: roster in place. But what we miss in this all
Speaker 1: is that Kevin can't actually make those decisions count. Kenny.
Speaker 1: That's it's like when a kid gets fat like a
Speaker 1: like you see childhood obesity. Do we blame the kid. No,
Speaker 1: it's the parents giving the kid the food. It's the
Speaker 1: people in place making sure that the kid is supposed
Speaker 1: to get nutrition or not. You can't have cake before breakfast, Kevin.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. No, you cannot, absolutely not. I don't care
Speaker 1: that you really want it. No, you cannot trade Jared
Speaker 1: Allen for first and for four first round picks for
Speaker 1: James Harden. I don't care that Kyrie Irving's on walk about.
Speaker 1: We did not need another point guard. We need a
Speaker 1: rim protector. No, we can't put on We can't put
Speaker 1: on DeAndre Jordan on our roster for ten million dollars
Speaker 1: a year. That's when I knew things were fucked up.
Speaker 1: Right then, I was like, they get to bring their
Speaker 1: walk trend for ten million dollars a year? Wow, do
Speaker 1: they run the team? Sith? So to me, this soft
Speaker 1: falls on Joe Side. Kyrie's made bad decisions, Kd's made
Speaker 1: bad decisions. Sean Marks is the GM, but Joe Side's
Speaker 1: one of the most active decision makers in all of
Speaker 1: basketball ownership. And Joe said should take every single bit
Speaker 1: of blame. And you know what, Joe Sige's the one
Speaker 1: telling everyone who has season tickets, you're not getting any refunds.
Speaker 1: Joe Side is the one who is saying, I have
Speaker 1: to keep some semblance of my money for this dog
Speaker 1: shit franchise that I ran into the ground. Then nobody
Speaker 1: even cares about in their own city. And at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, He's going to do whatever it
Speaker 1: takes to preserve the value of his franchise and keep
Speaker 1: the money flowing. And maybe that means not trading Kevin
Speaker 1: Durant at all, and maybe that means finally saying, fuck you,
Speaker 1: where does this all go? Somehow, I think Kyrie makes
Speaker 1: his way to the Lakers, and somehow I think they
Speaker 1: still don't make the playoffs. And third, I think the
Speaker 1: Brooklyn Nets will be a lottery team for a very
Speaker 1: long time and they'll won't have their picks until the
Speaker 1: next two administrations. From now two administrations for now twenty
Speaker 1: twenty eight. Rock That's when I can hear Tillman Fertita,
Speaker 1: the Houston Rockets owner, laughing in Houston, all the way
Speaker 1: from District of Columbia. And you know what, turns out
Speaker 1: the man with the shrimp forks pretty smart. They didn't
Speaker 1: want any He didn't didn't want any players. He just
Speaker 1: wanted all those picks and all those pick swaps. That's
Speaker 1: all the time that we have for the heat Check.
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Speaker 1: produces guys wish Me, a Safe Flight m