Please Lord Let This Boston-Brooklyn Trade Draw Out All Summer
Please Lord Let This Boston-Brooklyn Trade Draw Out All Summer
I could not have asked for a better development for this offseason. Now I just hope it keeps going the rest of the off-season.
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It was news that rocked the entire sports world on Monday morning -- or so I assume anyway, I wasn't on Twitter and only found out when my Nets fan co-worker DMed me and FOTB Jason Lipshutz to complain about how many texts he'd been getting. Shams and Woj both tweeted that the Nets had been talking with the Celtics on a trade that would send two-time finals MVP Kevin Durant to Boston for a package centered around 25-year-old All-Star swingman Jaylen Brown -- possibly along with defensive-minded combo guard Derrick White and a future firsts, if you believe Shams' reporting. The Nets turned it down, asking for more draft compensation, reigning Defensive Player of the Year Marcus Smart, one more rotation player and the guitar Tom Scholz played on the original studio recording of "More Than a Feeling."
Honestly, outside of Tyrese Maxey randomly growing another half-foot or A24 announcing an Uncut Gems sequel starring Evan Turner, I could not have asked for a better development for this offseason. Now I just hope it keeps going the rest of the off-season.
Much of the discussion around this trade proposal will of course surround which team the trade is unfair towards -- I think the Nets are probably right to hold out for at least significantly more draft compensation -- but the reason why this is a beautiful trade rumor is that it's perfectly set up for fans of both teams to be equally aggrieved at the suggestion that they're giving up too much in it. Celtics fans will say that getting an All-Star just entering his prime that fits on any roster and has never really even shown what he can do as a first option is the best a team can hope for in return for a 33-year-old who just got swept in the first round. Nets fans will say that it would be a war atrocity to even contemplate trading one of the best players of all-time for a second banana who can't dribble. Both fanbases are right, both are wrong, both are very annoying. And both will be unmovable in their position for decades after the trade happens, or doesn't.
I'm hoping it's "doesn't," of course. Partly that's because the idea of the Celtics opening the season with Kevin Durant in their lineup is some real jump-scare shit, but mostly that's because the idea of this dragging out interminably is just what the doctor ordered for Sixers fans this offseason. For me, anyway: Watching other fanbases work themselves into a tizzy that would be game-changing if it happened (but very likely might not ever) just makes me extra glad we stayed late at school and got our homework done early this offseason. Other teams are still furiously scribbling notes; our ink is so dry we could lean on the page for hours without causing so much as a smudge. It's a nice feeling -- and certainly not one we're used to as Process Trusters, having had to shuttle from one offseason crisis to another every summer seemingly since the Billy King administration.
And the longer the trade discussion lingers, the more bad feelings it elicits on both sides. We already got one insta-classic out-of-context "smh" tweet from Jaylen Brown within hours of the Shams/Woj tweets, as the trade goes on longer and more players get roped into the reports, the sourness will no doubt continue to spread. And then if it percolates for months without ever coming to fruition, both Brown and Durant return to their home teams pissed off and ready to get malcontent -- Brown because the team was seriously discussing dealing him, Durant because the team wasn't discussing it seriously enough. It's brilliant near-sabotage of maybe the Sixers' two biggest divisional threats, without anyone outside the two teams even needing to lift a tampering finger.
Those are just the short-term benefits. Long-term, if the trade doesn't happen? Or if Durant gets dealt somewhere else? Then not only do the what-ifs haunt everyone involved, particularly the C's -- think all the "Sixers sure wish they had Jimmy Butler now huh?" self-flagellation from the 2020 and 2022 playoffs combined, then probably doubled or tripled -- but we also get to go back to doing the Oh Wow, Did Trader Danny Just Almost Deal For Another Superstar? Wow What An Incredible Team the Celtics Almost Have thing all over again, maybe basically forever. (Yes, I know that Ainge is in Utah now and that Brad Stevens is technically pulling the strings for Boston now; the principle remains.) It's basically all upside for Sixers fans.
OK, I guess there is one potential downside -- the Celtics could actually end up swinging a non-crippling deal for Durant, vaulting them to preseason championship favorite status and suddenly making the Sixers' offseason haul of De'Anthony Melton, P.J. Tucker and Danuel House, Jr. seem like microscopic potatoes in comparison. That's not a particularly exciting prospect, I suppose -- and there are probably plenty of Sixers fans who think they should be out there actively trying to compete with Boston in the Durant sweepstakes, and they may have a point. But right now, I don't really want to contemplate any of that. I just want to change the channel from the Sixers' summer to some bingeable offseason drama that involves two teams not based in Philadelphia, lose myself in that familiar song, close my eyes and slip away.