NBA Open Thread - Week 3

The Nets mercifully canned Steve Nash today in what surely came as a tremendous relief to him personally, his family, and other loved ones generally.

In Brooklyn we have perhaps the most disgraceful form that modern basketball has yet taken. While the NBA and its players have been slowly drifting towards a world of ever-shorter, ever-larger contracts and greater theoretical free agent flexibility, the Nets jumped the gun in making a bid to become the worst offenders in a sport where anti-competition lurks ever-present beneath the surface in service to media/business/legacy interests.

Thankfully, while karma may not factually exist, the concept taps into the truth that bad or mercurial actors tend towards behaviors that will accrete and ultimately doom whatever enterprise they’re involved in. Kevin Durant is an amazing scorer and an awful judge of the character of his fellow man and steward of his own professional life’s legacy. Kyrie Irving had the potential to be a memorable undersized shooting guard before following his wandering mind’s curious streak down confused and offensive alleyways. James Harden is one of the basketball players in NBA history. The Nets made the bet that if you assemble enough collective basketball skill, you could overcome the horrific vibes their acquisition would entail and their identities would perpetuate.

And for a moment it looked like it might just work. Then the Bucks showed up, scrapped, and hung on, winning and spiting that artificial Mephistophelian machine poised to laugh in the face of everything the average basketball fan holds dear when it comes to the virtues of sport: Honor, teamwork, loyalty, self-respect, playing for the place and people on the front of the jersey above all else. That clash of spirits was a large reason why that series and that title run derived so much meaning.

You’d think after abject failure after abject failure the Nets would have learned by now; cut ties, sell for whatever you can get, and start over and do the excruciating work of team building the hard way. Value basketball skill, yes, but character also if you can. Then you read down to the bottom of that ESPN article I linked and see that the Nets may go after suspended-for-God-knows-what-conduct Ime Udoka in what reads as one last bid to see if the devil’s bargain they made can’t come good. I wish them nothing but misery and, hopefully, ultimate collapse.

Update: Yep.

Anyways, please use the comments to discuss the other goings-on of the NBA this week! Remember to follow our community guidelines, and apologies again for posting this late.