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[QUOTE="jncuse, post: 4562573, member: 1969"]
Sean Marks / Atkinson did a good job in the post Billy King Disaster era.    Without too many great picks they built up a team with decent supporting pieces like Dinwiddie, Levert, Allen, Harris, Claxton, and they now had all their future picks back.

Adding Durant/Irving in free agency was a significant "character" risk, but a worthwhile risk in my view.    You had nice supporting pieces above and all your draft capital to sort of fill in the team.

I think 2 things did in the Nets and threw their risk profile out of control:
1) Going for the Big 3 with Harden (more below).   Got greedy and it blew up here - and move their risk way up.
2) The Pandemic which was beyond their control.  The Pandemic and Vaccine turned a questionably sane player in Kyrie Irving to an insane player.    But when you have Kyrie, you have to accept that he will find something to lose his sanity over.

Getting back to #1, I'm not a big fan of the "Big 3" philosophy -- there is only so much ball, so its a 1+1+1=2 type situation, and you have to gut your team to do it.  It worked with Miami, but they also had James, Wade and a 3rd player in Bosh who was willing to defer.    But I also felt it minimized there ability as a whole to be honest.

Also the "Diva" factor of Durant, Irving, Harden is much more than James, Wade, and Bosh.

I think the Nets would have been better using that core they inherited when they signed Durant/Irving (Dinwiddie/Allen/Levert/Jack and all their picks) and trying to find elite role players or two.     Instead of going after a Harden, go after a player like a OG Anunoby -- an elite 3+D player.

The final downfall for the Nets was trading Harden for Simmons.    The thing is though at the time, almost everybody thought this was potentially a great fit trade for both teams.
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