Is this the year or never for Brooklyn? However, after the arrivals of Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and finally James Harden at the Nets, the franchise had everything to win several titles.
We know the rest: the leader’s refusal to be vaccinated and then James Harden’s transfer request led to a chaotic season, punctuated by Kevin Durant’s (unsuccessful) desires for other places but also a Kyrie Irving who did not not been extended and who will therefore be an unprotected “free agent” at the end of this campaign.
For GM Sean Marks, whose departure KD had demanded, the context therefore remains complicated, and the manager is well aware that his room for maneuver is increasingly limited…
“I’d probably be crazy to think it’s not, but I try not to focus on the fact that it’s now or never (for the title)”, he explains to the New Zealand presshis country. “You have to do it, because you can get carried away with rash decisions, but we know where our window is, and it’s shrinking again and again and again. So for us, now is the time. »
Sean Marks hopes, a bit like Steve Nash, that the adversity experienced during the last campaign, but also during the off-season, will have paradoxically united this group.
A good bottle of red wine to erase the differences
“We owe it to each other, to the players, to the organization and to the Brooklyn neighborhood. We are ready for the challenge, I am not worried about it”he adds.
But the GM does not want to dwell on this eventful summer, simply assuring that the reconciliation with Kevin Durant took place around a “good bottle of red (wine)” and that this offseason was finally “An opportunity to really look in the mirror and debrief, one way or another. »
In the end, he believes that a transfer of Kevin Durant was simply impossible.
“At the end of the day, the other teams realized that they didn’t have what it took to acquire arguably one of the top three players in the world, who is under contract for another four years.”he concluded. “If they had to give up their entire treasure chest, their goals would have been reduced.”
With Ben Simmons in good health and a better balanced workforce than last year, the Nets’ goals are still very high. But as Sean Marks says, the window of opportunity for the title is now very small…
