ESSAY: How Boston’s big Finals win puts things into perspective for Brooklyn’s Nets
Photo by Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE via Getty Images
The Nets have a new minority owner who probably like a lot of us watched the Celtics disassemble the Mavericks. Pooch asks what does the Celtics big win tell us about where the two Eastern rivals stand? The Celtics put out the Mavericks flame in the 2024 NBA Finals, dispatching them in quick fashion and raising the possibility that they could be dynastic in a weak East. The proper gentleman’s sweep that (almost) felt inevitable. The Celts are that good. The series was over in five. However, the unconventional Finals schedule was so stretched it gave someone like me (and so many other folks from New York) time to sit back and digest another Boston championship. Stomach churning again.
We’ll delve into lessons learned, but bottom line is that the Boston Celtics are light years ahead of the Brooklyn Nets in the basketball universe and will likely stretch out that celestial lead. Star Wars level stuff.
First, Let’s get this peice of recent history out of the way:
Boston sports teams just nabbed their 14th championship in the four major pro sports since the millennium back in 2000. New York’ has just two titles in that same quarter century ... and that’s with double the amount of teams for New York. The Celtics, Red Sox Patriots and Bruins are not just sworn enemies. They should also a model as well. Good fortune like taking Tom Brady at No. 199 in the NFL draft is great but competence is better and as we’ve noted before, the greatest GM in Brooklyn history, Branch Rickey of the Dodgers, put it all in perspective for us, “Luck is the residue of design.” If the Nets are ever to catch the Celtics, they’ll need a lot of design work and luck.
The bigger, broader picture of the Boston vs. New York is not about bagels, beans and banners. It’s about having a plan that’s well thought out and executed in a precise manner. The Celtics did that, starting the painful but smart decision to think about a direction, then execute it. No fits and starts, no panic. The Nets? Not so much.
Indeed, Nets-Celtics can stand with anyone. The rivalry is truly bizarre in its own right, putting aside the trades. The rivalry goes back to the Jason Kidd era and will likely remain alive for years to come, thanks to one notorious trade from Draft Night 2013 that still stinks. You can still smell it on a rainy fall day at the corner of Flatbush and Atlantic.
Again, I don’t wanna make it sound like a revisit to a reverse Big Bambino curse from a hundred years ago. (ICYMI, the Sox sold the Babe Ruth to the Yankees for one hundred thousand dollars.) Boston’s owner needed the cash to finance a Broadway musical. If you most know it was “No, No, Nannette.” It was the worst trade in any sports for nearly a 100 years until Billy King got on the phone and spoke with Danny Ainge. The Celtics ultimately wound up with Finals MVP Jaylen Brown and Mr. Wholesome, Jaylen Tatum in that deal. Nets fans in New Jersey and Brooklyn got agita.
So, with all that past and future in mind, I watched the 2024 NBA Finals and appreciated every player on that Celtics team, led by a gritty hustler in Joe Mazzulla. When you love the game of basketball, you appreciate these types of teams. They don’t come along that often.
Then again, what cannot be avoided is the inevitable comparison with the Brooklyn Nets who wound up on the opposite side of destiny and history in the trade. (ICYMI again, Boston sent three players aged 34, 35 and 36, aka cooked, to Brooklyn for four unprotected first rounders, two of whom became Brown and Tatum, basketball assassins.) How lopsided was the deal? Both Boston superstars are still six years younger than Pierce and Garnett were at the time of the trade now 11 years on.
Indeed, the Nets-Celtics rivalry is real and filled with great moments and some really icky ones that earned them some really bad karma. Here’s a few of them to start you off on your journey.
Perhaps you will remember when a group of New Jersey Nets fans held up a tasteless sign that read “Will Someone Please Stab Paul Pierce?” in Game 1 of the 2002 NBA Eastern Conference Finals which the Nets won in six. Others might think about when Kyrie Irving infamously stepped on the Lucky the Leprechaun after the 2021-2022 playoffs. He hasn’t won there since. They’re two very different examples from two different generations, but as a New Yorker — and specifically as a Nets fan — the best route to take right now is to simply stay humble, really humble, even prostrate yourself. Those Boston ghosts are very very real.
How’d we get here? Let’s start with the early 2000s…
The Nets owned the Celtics when Jason Kidd was traded to the team. Heck, they owned all of the East during the 2001-03 run. But their matchups against the Celtics were cold-hearted. While Nets fans held up that nasty sign, Celtics fans had their share of cruelty as well. They painted “wife beater” on their chest and chanted it at Kidd and his then-wife Joumana with their son T.J. sitting courtside.
On the court, the games were tight as the Nets prevailed against them in 2002 and 2003 playoffs, yet there’s nothing to show for it. They lost in the Finals each time and the Celtics won its 17th NBA title as Kidd was shipped off to Dallas. The end of an era. A hopeless feeling as one of the game’s greats walks out the door and you win 34 games the following season (then 12 the next!) Sound familiar?
The rivalry disappeared as the Nets became irrelevant in their final couple years in New Jersey.
That changed really quickly when they moved to Brooklyn in 2013...
Billy King and Dmitry Razumov were overambitious and oversensitive after the first round exit against Chicago. It was their first year in Brooklyn and they had the second-highest payroll in the NBA. The chip on their shoulder might’ve been too big, too heavy for them to handle. Owner Mikhail Prokhorov spent the money and kept his hands off, but the bar was high with a five-year championship window. They panicked and made THAT trade, a trade so bad that the league quite literally changed rules in effort to avoid another such disaster.
You know the deal. During the 2013 draft, the Nets acquired watered down versions of Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, and Jason Terry in exchange for Kris Humphries, Gerald Wallace, MarShon Brooks, Kris Joseph, Keith Bogans and three unprotected first-round picks, plus the right to swap first-round picks in 2017.
As told in our offseason report, the earliest version of the deal started with Kris Humphries and a pick for Paul Pierce. As talks progressed, the Nets did not want Jason Terry and would only take on his contract if the Celtics agreed to giving up only one pick. “Trade fever” took over and the Nets eventually gave up four picks and took on Terry’s contract.
The Nets won one playoff series with those guys on the team and only one full season with them. It felt worse than a heist... and it was. In the words of Celtics principal owner Wyc Grousbeck:
“As I recall, [Danny Ainge] came to me with that deal on Draft Day [in 2013] and said, ‘We’re going to get two first-round picks from Brooklyn for [Garnett, Pierce, Terry, and D.J White], and take on some contracts.’ And I said, ‘OK, are [the picks] unprotected?’ And he said, ‘Yes, in fact, they are.’ I said, ‘Great. Let’s go get a third pick.’ And he goes, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa,’ but, ‘All right, I’ll ask.’ And he’s not afraid to ask, he wasn’t pushing back. But he went and asked, and he said, ‘Unbelievable. We got a third pick. This is great.’ And I said, ‘Great. Go get a fourth pick. I think these guys have deal fever — we’re going to keep going until they say no. I think they’ve been told by ownership to get the deal done, so let’s go back.’
And that’s where we are today. Two of those picks turned into J1 and J2 — you can be the judge of which is which. No matter, they are a duo that’s now officially cemented its dominance of the East. LeBron James left for Los Angeles during the 2017-18 season. Since then, they’ve lost in Finals in 2022 and the Conference Finals 2020 and 2023. Tatum is 26 and Brown is 27 and once Tatum signs his reported $315 million offer sheet the two will be under contract through the next four years. Brad Stephens can fill out the roster knowing that. Sean Marks should have been that lucky.
It makes you wonder what would’ve been if the Nets beat the Bulls in Game 7 of the 2012-13 postseason. Or maybe not. It’s too painful.
These Days...
The Nets reportedly rejected a “package” from Boston during KD’s hold out, one that featured Brown, Derrick White and a pick for Kevin Durant. There’s not much more detial out there, but no one has denied there were talks. There’s no saying how things nod would’ve played out but the Finals MVP is further proof of what feels like, looks like another missed opportunity.
Mikal Bridges is solid and the unprotected picks from Phoenix are among the most valuable in the NBA, but IF Brooklyn’s plan is to trade those picks then who’s to say that Jaylen Brown wouldn’t be the type of player you’d want? No, he is not available now and his loyalty to Boston appears rock solid. That said, he’s only 27 and things change. Ask Sean Marks and Joe Tsai. They’ll tell you.
Right now, that is a pipe dream. So was Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and James Harden at one point. Hope is not a strategy, though, and hoping for a stroke of luck or someone else’s incompetence that will get you a generational haul is at the edge of delusional ... again at least up to this point. The Nets will go big-game hunting at some point maybe next year. They’ll be armed with all sorts of assets: tens of millions of dollars in cap space, draft picks that seem to go on forever and one of the wealthiest women in the world as a new partner.
Can they find a Jayen Brown or a Jayson Tatum on their own or find a disgruntled star who will do to his team what Kevin Durant did to the Nets. Don’t those basketball gods we worship owe us something?
There’s been a lot of heartbreak in Nets World the past year or so. Last week was just another reminder that the Celtics have simply run circles around the Nets over the past decade, a time of major malfunction (or is it dysfunction in Brooklyn?)
Final Word
We recently ran a poll for Nets fans asking which would sting more between a Celtics Finals victory or a Mavericks/Kyrie Finals victory — 43% said Mavs and 37% said Celtics. The other 20% said they’ve moved on. Liars.
It’s easy to say that you’ve moved on until you realize the Nets have helped others more than they’ve helped themselves. That goes for past management/ownership along with the new. The scenario Brooklyn Nets fans live in today is limbo… Wait it out and have hope that Sean Marks and Joe Tsai make the right moves with the players and assets they have.
Some can get behind that and some can’t. That’s the idea of being a fan. Whether it be the trade that happened or the trade that didn’t happen, it’s fair to assume all fans can agree that this Celtics victory feels like the final dagger on what’s been a very strange season, not to mention having to compete for years to come against a monster they created.
It’s enough to make you ill.
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