Welp, that’s it. It’s time to shut down the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Stephen A. Smith is done and never going back after the Nets’ lackluster performance Tuesday night against the Golden State Warriors.
Smith went on one of his infamous daily tirades Wednesday morning, and to be quite honest, who can blame him for feeling this way after the second half shellacking Brooklyn was subjected to against the Warriors Tuesday night?
I don’t often agree with SAS, but this time he’s on point with his take. Kevin Durant does feel like a man on an island all alone. He opted for the Nets over the Knicks mainly due to his BFF, Kyrie Irving. Now Irving is nowhere to be found, and he’s stuck with a sub 20ppg version of James Harden and was forced to listen to his home crowd cheer on Stephen Curry and the Warriors in that debacle of a game last night.
The roof isn’t exactly caving in on Brooklyn, but I know this has been more of a struggle than Durant could have imagined when he left the Warriors in favor of the Nets. The first season was a wash because of his Achilles injury, last year they came up short in the playoffs, and now Irving is out, and as we can see, they could really use his 27 points a game right now.
Another point Smith touched on was that of the contractual long-term basketball future of Irving. He mentioned that no NBA should offer up another long-term deal for Kyrie’s services on the court because he can’t be trusted. Where basketball is concerned, he’s been unreliable over the last year. I think that could be the approach moving forward for any team that even entertains the idea of signing Irving to a contract. It might be nothing, but one-year deals for Irving after his current contract in Brooklyn runs out.
At one point in the game, a camera caught KD and Harden on the bench watching chef Curry cook up, and it looked like a meme just waiting to happen. Just go ahead and post it with “insert caption” above their bewildered domes.
This Brooklyn project doesn’t feel like it has the legs to stand up for the long haul. If I had to put money down right now, I’d say Irving won’t be back in a Nets jersey this year, if ever again. It doesn’t seem like Harden is too keen on sticking around long-term at this point, and that just leaves KD all alone as the sole survivor. Although that isn’t what he signed up for when he left Golden State. I feel you, Stephen A., it is a mess in Brooklyn right now, and their championship window looks to be getting smaller and smaller by the week.
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