TheNetsFan wrote:MrDollarBills wrote:I will be sickened when Boston wins the NBA championship. Brad Stevens and Ime Udoke are superior to Marks and Nash in every facet. Tatum and Brown make KD and Kyrie look like crap. There, I've said it. KD isn't getting any younger and embarrassed himself in the first round. Kyrie didn't give two hoots whether we won or lost. Boston's core is way better than ours. I think we need to be honest.
Joe Tsai is a fool for paying out a half a billion dollars for the slop that was put forth this season. Not including the money he wastes paying Steve Nash.
Boston & to a lesser extent Milwaukee are exactly why Marks is looking to maintain the flexibility to pivot/rebuild in the next year or two. Tsai is not going to continue to pay near record luxury taxes for first or second round exits. If this team fails to make the finals next year, Marks will likely look to shed salary, get a haul for KD, get something for Kyrie & rebuild around Ben.
Right, and I sincerely hope that even if Marks is still in love with this iteration of the team, he's developed some plan B and Plan C rebuild scenarios.
That said, what he does in the next couple weeks with Kyrie's contract could heavily impact all that. I'm thinking not only does the new contract have to be Nets-friendly, but it also has to be the right length for other teams to want it. Too short, and what's the point? Too long, and what GM is going to want to shackle themselves like that? And of course, Kyrie himself will have to like it. Talk about a quandary.
Indeed, right now it seems like Marks has a brief, ideal window to S&T Kyrie while causing the least amount of grief to KD. Because right now Marks can argue that Kyrie only averages 34g/yr, and much of that was caused by his personal decisions and beliefs, and that Kyrie refusing some version of an appropriate, incentivized contract made it impossible to resign the guy. Durant will still be pissed, but he's not a dummy, and will have to concede on some levels that Marks has plenty of good points in that argument.
By contrast, trading Kyrie in future seasons (and he's inevitably going to get injured again) would seem far more of an unnecessary slap in the face to KD without just cause. Well, that's my theory.
One other thing I'm thinking is that despite how unhappy KD & KI might become with the Nets one day, surely they must realise that the chances of them playing together on another team is highly unlikely, and that the Nets really did do everything they could to accommodate them here. Or would even those simple facts be too much for their pride and egos to handle?
