Hating on NBA superteams has become such a popular tradition in recent years that it should probably come with a slice of apple pie and some medical debt.
From the first modern iteration in the Celtics’s “Boston Three Party” (Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen, and Paul Pierce) to LeBron James and Anthony Davis teaming up in Los Angeles, many fans have spent hours on message boards and in barbershops sinking their teeth into the myriad of ways a team full of extremely talented players will fail. But no “Big Three” trio has been doubted so vehemently out of the gate as the one that just formed in New York City.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A bearded career underachiever looks to reinvent himself with some old friends in Brooklyn. Earlier this month, James Harden joined superstar Kevin Durant and perennial sidekick Kyrie Irving on the Nets, who have since rapidly shot up on oddsmakers’ boards to win the NBA championship. Those improved odds, though, run directly counter to the major question marks surrounding these three highly utilized on-ball scorers and how they will harmoniously coexist on the court. Each of the three players has a usage rate above 30% with the Nets already, which is nearly impossible to sustain in the long term — especially considering the fact that Harden’s first two games have been without Irving, who missed time due to a combination of personal reasons and COVID-19 safety protocols.
There’s only one ball on the court, after all, the trite yet popular refrain goes, and these players’ games aren’t exactly made for sharing. So how will a man who has failed to win at the highest level (Harden), a mercurial star who misses games at will (Irving), and a freak athlete with a Twitter burner account (Durant) unite to succeed on the court?
The answer is pretty obvious: They’ll do it because they’re damn good at playing basketball. If that sounds simple, it’s because it is. We’re not solving a Diophantine equation, after all. We’re just doing some simple addition — ”good” plus “good” plus “good” equals great.
Durant is the best scorer of his size to play the game. There has never been a player like him in NBA history, and there might not be one again until all professional basketball players evolve into 6-foot-10 athletic wizards who can bury a 3-pointer in your face and dunk over you in succession. Harden no longer has to play the most annoying brand of basketball ever invented, in which he dribbles you into a hypnotic sleep before drilling a step-back 3-pointer or drawing a foul. He can now both create his opportunities and dish to fellow elite talent to bury opposing teams. Irving has proven he can help lead a superteam to a title as a deputy already (with the Cavaliers in 2016) and is a punishing 3-point threat who can score plenty in his own right.
Not even a Stan Van Gundy defense in its prime would have been able to stop these three together night-in and night-out. They’ll be able to spread the floor at will and exploit any and all soft spots in opposing defenses. If they’re not playing great defense themselves, they can just take a page out of the Golden State Warriors’s playbook and make sure to outscore their opponent by the time the final buzzer sounds.
Sure, they’re all pretty ball-dominant players who like to create their own magic. But they’ve played together before, either on the same NBA team or in All-Star Games and international play. These guys aren’t strangers working out kinks on a pickup basketball court. They should have no trouble adapting to each other’s games as the wins pile up.
The leader of this new fireworks show is perhaps the most underappreciated reason this partnership will pay off. Nets coach Steve Nash has made a career out of managing big personalities as a floor general and is a fantastic fit to temper the larger-than-life personality of someone like Irving mixing up with Harden and Durant. What better person to help them work together than a former player who made waves as an outspoken political advocate, one who received more than his share of backlash for (at the time) unpopular stances that put his career in a magnifying glass? Nash knows people, and he’s socially conscious enough to understand how to massage massive egos.
This team is less an album you listen to from start to finish and more one that has three of the best tracks you’ve ever heard. It’s those that make it great, even if the supporting songs are simply fine by comparison.
Let’s not overthink this.
Three of the best players of their era have teamed up to form one of the most explosive units we’ve ever seen on a basketball court. The Brooklyn Nets have become one of the top basketball teams on this flat Earth.
Sit down, eat some apple pie, and enjoy the show.
Cory Gunkel is a freelance writer based in Washington, D.C.
