The Brooklyn Nets are now on the other side of their superteam era, with Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, and James Harden all being traded away. The team which seemed like they would inevitably win a championship never even made it to the Eastern Conference Finals, and is widely considered a massive disappointment.
The Big 3 barely played in any games together, and the Nets now have a team of likable role players and many assets moving forward. But with the era officially over, the former Nets stars have been opening up a bit about what went wrong. Kyrie Irving recently broke his silence on the matter and now another one of the stars has spoken out.
James Harden was the piece that gave the Brooklyn Nets a Big 3, but he was also the first of them to leave. After over a year with the organization, Harden requested a trade and was sent to the Philadelphia 76ers in a package with Ben Simmons going the other way. At the time, some labeled Harden a quitter, but he spoke candidly to ESPN about the dysfunction within the franchise.
“Yeah, there was,” he said. “Like, a lot of things. But it was just a lot of dysfunction. Clearly. But it was a lot of internal things that I’m not going to ever just say, put in the media or anything. And that was one of the reasons why I chose to make my decision.
Even though he is being honest about the fact that there were big issues in the organization, Harden has not pinpointed any in particular. It’s been well-publicized that he didn’t see eye to eye with Kyrie Irving, but clearly, the problems with the Nets ran deeper than that.
James Harden Says He Didn’t Just Leave For No Reason
Behind the scenes in any organization, there can be a lot of issues that fans never end up being privy to. Kevin Durant demanding that Sean Marks and Steve Nash be fired is a sign that there were significant problems within the organization even beyond the players. Joe Tsai has also been criticized for the way he handled some things. And as Harden puts it, he had his reasons for leaving.
“I didn’t just ask to leave for no reason. I was in a really good place in Houston. Obviously, we didn’t have a chance to win a championship, but I was comfortable. So for me to up and leave my family, all the things I created there, to come to Brooklyn for a year and a half to try to just get up and leave, it was for a reason, you know what I mean? But I’m happy for the organization and what they’ve got back. They got some really good pieces.”
The Brooklyn Nets will always remain a huge ‘what if’ but the reality is that success eluded them despite all the talent at their disposal. The franchise seems to be moving on, as have the stars, so perhaps this will be the last NBA fans hear about what exactly went down until those involved choose to reveal more.
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