Can the Brooklyn Nets win an NBA title despite the situation involving Kyrie Irving?
Just a few weeks ago, the Brooklyn Nets were considered the overwhelming favorites to win the NBA Championship. Assuming health, there’s not really another team in the league that could match up with this team’s talent.
However, the outlook for the Nets has drastically changed over the past week. Now that Kyrie Irving isn’t eligible to play for the Nets, and it appears that isn’t going to change anytime soon, the Nets will have to rely on Kevin Durant and James Harden.
On the surface, that might be a problem that perhaps nearly every other team in the league is willing to have. Although, perhaps it’s not that simple.
The big question for the Nets heading into the start of the season isn’t whether the Nets could win a championship with Harden and Durant as their No. 1 and 2; it’s whether they can win a championship with a dark cloud of Kyrie hovering over the team.
Let’s not get this twisted; just because Kyrie “cleared the air in his Instagram Live,” there’s no question that this is a storyline that’s going to follow this team heading into the thick of the season.
Just because Kyrie is going to be away from the team for the foreseeable future doesn’t change the elephant in the locker room. Reporters are going to continue to ask about the situation, even more so if the Nets hit a bit of a rough stretch at all.
That, of course, is unless Kyrie elects to end this all by simply getting the vaccine. But it doesn’t appear that’s going to happen – at least not for now.
With every loss, every losing streak, and every injury, the situation in Brooklyn regarding Kyrie is going to be magnified even more.
Not only will the Nets have to overcome the loss of an all-star, but they’ll also have to navigate a season in which they have hopes of winning an NBA Championship with an extremely big dark cloud hovering over the team.
Will talent win out or will this incarnation of the Nets be another example that you can’t cheat the system and that the NBA is not just all about talent?