The Brooklyn Nets and Kevin Durant are headed towards a breakup. Prior to teams and players being able to agree to contract extensions on Thursday afternoon, news came out that Durant went to the Nets front office and requested a trade, bringing an end to his three-year stint with the franchise.
There are a whole lot of questions that can be asked right now, but at the top of the list is how things could have gone so wrong for a team that looked like a championship contender. According to Nick Friedell of ESPN, the fingers are being pointed at Kyrie Irving among those in the know in Brooklyn.
“Almost all of it,” Friedell said when asked how much blame is being placed on Irving. “Malika, they know that if Kyrie had gotten that vaccination, their season would look incredibly different. First and foremost, James Harden would still be here, that team would have done much better in the regular season, would have had a higher playoff seed. Of course, they had injuries, but if Kyrie is on the floor full time, it’s not a distraction. And I cannot tell you, after all the years I’ve been doing this, how miserable that team was at the end of that season, top-to-bottom in the organization.
They’re not blaming Kyrie for every single thing, but they know not only the vaccination shot, but all the ways that he said … all the things that he did in press conferences, and people are looking around in the organization, shaking their head, and he’s talking about, ‘I wanna be on top with Joe Tsai and Sean Marks and Kevin,’ and they’re going, ‘Huh? What is that guy talking about?’” Friedell continued.
Friedell went on to mention that another team he covered this season, the Golden State Warriors, featured a similar player having COVID vaccine hesitancy in a city with a mandate, as Andrew Wiggins did not want to get vaccinated but eventually relented and, as Friedell says, “that brought the Warriors closer than they have been in years.”
“As they look back, I think everybody in that organization knows that everything that happened today falls right at the feet of Kyrie Irving,” Friedell said.
Irving was slated to become an unrestricted free agent this summer but decided to pick up his player option for the 2022-23 season. While he said that he would play for the team this upcoming season, reporting since Durant’s trade request indicates that may no longer be the case.