Remember the Brooklyn Nets as the worst team money could buy. Remember them as an ill-fitting set of big-name ballplayers who were expected to win a championship and then face-planted in the first round, failing to win even one playoff game.
The Nets made the 2022 Celtics look like the 1986 Celtics. Boston made a mockery of the notion that, as a surging two-seed in the East, it got a most unlucky bounce by drawing what was advertised as the most dangerous seven seed in the history of American sports.
Unlucky? Not exactly. That leprechaun Kyrie Irving stepped on last year got its sweet revenge this time around. The Nets weren’t just too small and too disorganized to avoid getting swept by the Celtics. By any fair measure of their own words, they also lacked the competitive heart worthy of a legitimate contender.
Steve Nash said they didn’t have the necessary intensity in Game 2. Blake Griffin said they didn’t have the necessary spirit in Game 3. Nash said they didn’t have the necessary durability in Game 4.
“Maybe they ran out of gas,” the coach said of his players.
They ran out of answers too. What an epic disaster. What a fitting end to a New York basketball season that started with so much promise, and ended with this most resounding thud.
A year after their stirring revival, the Knicks couldn’t even make the play-in tournament. A year after nearly reaching the conference final with one healthy star, the Nets couldn’t even make it to Game 5 in Round 1.
Kevin Durant sulks during the Nets’ loss to the Celtics on Monday.Charles Wenzelberg/New York Post
They made it interesting at the end Monday night, if you can call a routine endgame flurry by a trailing home team interesting. The Nets gave their fans way too little, way too late.
Nash said he was “proud of our guys for the fight after everything we went through.” Sure, the Nets endured Kevin Durant’s injury and…