James Harden has received his share of criticism for the way he left the Brooklyn Nets, with many accusing him of quitting the team after just 1 year. And while his absence was always going to be a factor in the results for Brooklyn, many thought it would be okay once Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant started playing together once more and Ben Simmons also came into the picture.
Well, Simmons is still out, with no concrete return date set for the guard. The Nets are struggling meanwhile, and have fallen to as low as the 10th seed in the Eastern Conference. While KD and Kyrie have both put up some insane performances in that stretch, consistent wins have still been extremely hard to come by for the Nets.
Throughout the last two seasons, since KD returned from injury, Kyrie Irving and he have shared the court on 30 occasions. The Nets have a 15-15 record in those games, which is almost hard to believe considering how good they both are as individuals.
This is compounded by the fact that James Harden’s presence made things vastly different for the Nets. In the games that he played alongside KD without Kyrie, Brooklyn was 22-11. And in the games the Beard teamed up with just Irving, the Nets went 18-7, an even better percentage of wins.
Harden’s playmaking was key to the Nets functioning like a team and his absence has always been felt keenly. Ben Simmons getting on the floor would make them a very scary team indeed, given his playmaking ability, but that seems to be further away than ever for the Nets.
Injuries and a lack of consistency have hampered this superteam almost since the day it was first put together and it is now on a healthy Durant and Irving to prove that they can win together going into the playoffs. Unless they can climb up a couple of seeding spots though, even getting there might prove to be a tricky proposition.
