The Brooklyn Nets are considered one of the NBA’s biggest losers for the month of February, according to an article published by Bleacher Report on Tuesday. Not to add insult to injury in a sense, but a lot of changes happened to the Nets over the course of the month.
For starters, Brooklyn was unable to come to terms on a contract extension with Kyrie Irving. Once the sides reached an impasse, Irving requested a trade. Once Irving was traded to the Dallas Mavericks for a package including Spencer Dinwiddie and Dorian Finney-Smith, Kevin Durant requested a trade of his own as well.
To make a long story short, Durant was then traded to the Phoenix Suns for a package including Mikal Bridges and Cameron Johnson. Within a week, the Nets went from title contenders to a rebuilding team in the blink of an eye. To put things in perspective, ever since Feb. 4 (first game for the team after Irving’s trade request became public), Brooklyn is just 3-6, 20th in the league in offensive rating (113.1) and 27th in defensive rating (119.8). B/R added more details to Brooklyn’s dire situation right now:
“The Brooklyn Nets entered February with two of history’s greatest isolation scorers on the roster in Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving. The mere presence of that pair gave Brooklyn no worse than a puncher’s chance of escaping the Eastern Conference.
Well, neither player made it to the trade deadline with the Nets. Durant is in Phoenix now (more on that in a minute), Irving is in Dallas and the Nets are lugging around more February losses than everyone but the Rockets and Spurs (3-7). They’ve suffered three losses by 18-plus points in that span.”
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