Who do the nets play next

Despite the Nets not having a selection in this year’s NBA Draft, the organization was still at the center of the chatter at its Barclays Center home on Thursday.

Agents, executives, players and reporters alike were pondering the question that will be front and center this week heading into the start of free agency on Friday: Is Kyrie Irving truly on the verge of bouncing from Brooklyn, and might Kevin Durant be close behind? Or, perhaps, is this all one big leverage play that will end with Irving and Durant side by side as they try yet again to bring the Nets their first NBA title?

Irving and the Nets appear deadlocked in contract talks with his June 29 player option deadline approaching. At the draft, Rich Kleiman, Durant’s agent and longtime business partner, even made an appearance before NBA Commissioner Adam Silver started introducing the league’s next generation.

With so much at stake entering a crucial week of option decisions and free agency, Alex Schiffer, The Athletic’s Nets writer, recruited national writers Sam Amick and Joe Vardon to sift through what’s leverage and what’s legitimate about the constant talk surrounding the organization.

Schiffer: All right gentlemen, where should we start? Nobody can offer Irving more money than the Nets, but the teams he’s expressed interest in going to if he leaves Brooklyn aren’t exactly full of cap space or assets that would interest the Nets in a sign-and-trade. Nor have those teams — other than the Knicks and mainly for Jalen Brunson — been active to open up any money for the 6-foot-2 point guard. There are so many layers to this thing and part of this is a game of ‘Who do you believe?’ So where do things stand on your end?

Amick: First of all, Alex, let’s make sure we’re seeing the forest for the trees here. In today’s NBA, where the player empowerment era has reached new heights and a discontented star player typically finds his way to the location of his choice, the cap mechanics are almost secondary.

Here’s what we know: Kyrie is clearly trying to find his way out of Brooklyn, with our Shams Charania recently revealing the impasse in negotiations and mentioning the Lakers, Clippers and Knicks among the possible suitors. Is this just leverage for him to get the full max deal he wants with the Nets, or is it a legit power play that spells the end for this superteam in Brooklyn?

The opinions around the league vary, but we’ll know soon enough. The deadline for Irving’s player option for next season (worth $36.9 million) is on Wednesday. But here’s the part where I want to toss the microphone to our Mr. Vardon, who covered LeBron James for so many years in Cleveland and knows the long and sordid Irving-LBJ history as well as anyone.

Joe, there are sources very close to the situation who strongly believe Irving is trying to make his way to the Lakers here and everything else is just (necessary) noise. The sense I get is that James is very open to the idea, but the dynamics are somewhat delicate too.

There’s a guy named Russell Westbrook who is still a part of the Lakers’ plans and who has a player option deadline of his own (worth $47.1 million) that everyone assumes he’ll be picking up by the Wednesday deadline. The Lakers can’t afford to make an already-sensitive situation even worse by acting as if he’s about to be replaced by Irving. Especially if it’s not actually going to happen.

Most folks around the league assume the Nets would have no interest in facilitating a Westbrook-Durant reunion, but there are others who believe that may be the best of the bad options in front of them. With that in mind, and considering the James-Irving Cavs remain the only team to have knocked off Golden State when it was healthy during this dynasty run, what do you make of all of this?

Vardon: I don’t think this conversation starts with LeBron and/or the Lakers. This is about Joe Tsai and what is best for the Brooklyn Nets.

Despite his best efforts, Irving has virtually no leverage in this situation, and that includes his relationship with Durant. The best short-term option is for Irving to be on this team, because Brooklyn has never really gotten a chance to see how far it could go with a healthy Durant, Irving and a third star — in this case, Ben Simmons. It’s a big “if,” but if neither Irving nor Durant suffers a serious injury throughout the season and both are healthy for the playoffs, the Nets would have a chance to win a championship. They have multiple trade exceptions to work with this summer — one for $11.4 million expires July 6 and another for $11.3 million is good until just about the February trade deadline. They could build around Durant and Irving and, if he decides he wants to play, Simmons, with Joe Harris still on the team.

There are two ways Irving is still on this team next season: Either he picks up his option or he signs a new multi-year contract with Brooklyn that is shorter than what he’s seeking. If Irving doesn’t want to do that, the Nets are under no obligation — none — to trade him where he wants to go. If he really wants to play with LeBron again and move to L.A., go for the midlevel. Prove basketball and winning are the main things. It is probably the only thing Irving could do to save his reputation after four solid years of destroying it.

Schiffer: OK, a few things to catch up on here. In regards to a Durant/Westbrook reunion, I’d like to point out that it’s the last combination we’ve yet to see since Durant signed with Golden State. We’ve had James Harden/Westbrook in Houston, Harden/Durant in Brooklyn, but no Russ and Kevin together again since their days in Oklahoma City. Any takers?

In regards to Tsai, all indications are that he and his general manager, Sean Marks, are in lockstep with the short-term contract approach they’ve taken with Irving. This isn’t Marks going rogue on ownership. He was non-committal to giving Irving a long-term contract in his postseason news conference and has backed it up in negotiations. To me, Tsai and Marks are too smart to not have considered the ramifications of holding their line on Irving and what it could mean in terms of a possible exit by Durant. It would surprise me if they look at the current situation as a curveball.

I’ve long said Irving and the Nets appear to be stuck with each other because of the lack of options around the league. I agree with Joe that Irving’s best move may be to opt into the player option, see what the never-before-seen Nets, co-starring Durant and Simmons, look like, stay healthy and then go into free agency next summer. It’s worth noting more teams will have cap space next summer too.

And aside from the Lakers, who are his other real options? Detroit, Orlando and Oklahoma City all have cap space, but they’re rebuilding and uninterested in a long-term max contract. The Knicks are creating cap space to chase Brunson, and my understanding is they see the Irving/Nets drama as a public negotiation. Irving would have to wait for the Knicks to miss out on all of their top point guard targets before sitting down with them.

Vardon: A “possible Durant exit” is a more lucrative proposition for Brooklyn than trading Kyrie to a destination of his choice. In Kyrie’s case, using the Lakers as an example, Westbrook has proven to no longer be a championship piece. If the Lakers trade him, he will be on his fifth team in five years. Enough said there. He doesn’t make the Nets better. Do you want Westbrook playing with Ben Simmons? Offensively they do the same things. The Nets should not consider a trade with the Lakers unless it is an Irving-Simmons trade for Russ AND Anthony Davis. Seems far-fetched, doesn’t it? Which of these other teams is going to offer the Nets a compelling package?

Durant, meanwhile, is a different situation. He has four years left on his contract, starting at $43 million this year. At that big of a number, the return on such a trade would be so lucrative for Brooklyn that it would likely be able to turn around whatever “rebuild” it was undertaking very quickly. To your point, Alex, Tsai and Marks recognize this, and it’s working into their math. All of the grumbling about Durant considering his options … well, he doesn’t really have any. I mean, like other NBA stars, Durant could force his team to trade him, but when, where and for whom is totally up to the Nets. And league rules regarding trades being what they are, they would get a huge return for one of the very best players in the sport.

Amick: The Durant subplot continues to be overlooked here, perhaps because he hasn’t publicly reached for the panic button just yet. He said on his podcast on Friday that he had “no involvement at all” when it comes to the Kyrie situation, and made it clear that they would remain friends no matter what happens next. But Shams’ intel indicates that Durant is “considering options with his future,” and I’ve spoken to involved sources who have been given that strong indication as well.

That’s a hell of a statement to make about a guy who signed a four-year, $198 million extension less than a year ago and who still spends a lot of nights looking like the best player in today’s game. And if the wheels of a Durant departure actually start rolling, then there obviously will be an incredibly long line of suitors willing to pay a heavy price for his services. The prospect of Durant asking out would be the kind of thing that changes the way almost every front office operates this summer. And with great reason.

Ja Morant, for one, seemed pretty eager to get the Durant trade talks going between Memphis and Brooklyn the other day when the young Grizzlies star tweeted “easy money” (a Durant nickname, for those who don’t know, is “Easy Money Sniper”). Then came Damian Lillard, the Portland superstar, who posted a photo-shopped pic of him and Durant for a few hours on his Instagram story on Saturday before deleting it. Rest assured, there’s a whole lot of angling going on behind the scenes with teams trying to land Durant that may never see the light of day.

The possibilities are seemingly endless. Think about the Phoenix Suns, who chose not to give big man Deandre Ayton the max deal he wanted last summer, in part, because they wanted to keep certain superstar options open going forward. One would think that a sign-and-trade package including Ayton (who is a restricted free agent) and small forward Mikal Bridges, for example, would move the needle for the Nets. Atlanta has been on the lookout for another star to pair with Trae Young for quite some time now and has all sorts of impact players and other assets to work with (Exhibit A: I wrote about the John Collins situation on draft day). Miami was one of the teams that sat down with Durant in the Hamptons during his 2016 free agency experience, and it’s a (very) safe bet that Pat Riley, Andy Elisburg and their staff wouldn’t struggle to figure out ways to bring him to town again.

Don’t hold your breath for a Warriors reunion, as all signs point to that being a total non-starter. But almost everywhere else, it’s safe to assume the Durant market would be robust.

As an aside, you have to wonder what Durant is truly thinking right about now. During his Warriors days, he was scrutinized heavily for the choice to sign one-year deals and give himself maximum leverage and flexibility at all times. Now, he commits to a franchise on a long-term deal and — thanks mostly to Irving — sees everything around him start to crumble in the Nets’ universe.

As for Irving, you’re dead-on, Joe. He doesn’t have any real leverage here, and the truth is we simply don’t know enough about the personal dynamics at play. This tweet he dropped on Friday got people talking, and it was just vague enough to maintain the mystery.

There’s so much more to learn here. Is the relationship between Irving and the Nets too far gone at this point, or is this just a case of tough negotiations? How does Durant see the Nets organization at the moment, not only in regards to the Irving situation but the James Harden mess that came before it as well?

As for the Knicks, Alex, I’m also told from folks who would know that the (Brunson-focused) franchise has no real interest in Irving at the moment and fully expect him to return to Brooklyn on the contract of his choosing. As for the Clippers, I think they’re in wait-and-see mode (like a lot of teams right now) and trying to get a better understanding of all the dynamics at play here. We’ll know a whole lot more by week’s end.

Schiffer: To add to your point on Durant, Sam, should Irving leave, this would be the second time in less than a year that one of Durant’s co-stars left town after saying he’d re-sign in Brooklyn. (Hello, Beard.) And in terms of Irving, his leverage is on a bit of a clock, given the Wednesday deadline. Should he opt into the player option, it disappears. Should he opt out, the Nets still have the ability to give him his max contract, even if it means a sign-and-trade. To rehash the Nets’ limited options with the Knicks, Lakers and Clippers, see my story from last Monday.

I will let you two speak to the bigger picture on a Durant departure, but I do think it’s worth noting this wouldn’t be a 1:1 of the situation the Nets’ were in after the infamous Celtics trade in 2013. Yes, the Rockets own a ton of their future picks. But for starters, Durant would command a bounty of a return, which gives them the assets to quickly start a rebuild. Given Marks and Tsai are in lockstep, I have a hard time believing Marks’ job is on the line if he’s on the same page with ownership. Marks has said before that he consults Irving and Durant on some of the organization’s major decisions and said as recently as May that Durant wouldn’t be surprised by anything that happens. So I would think he’s had a heads up to all of this even if he doesn’t like it. As for a Durant return, I asked a league source a few days ago about such a deal and the reply was, “Look up the Anthony Davis trade to the Lakers and start there.”

Vardon: In summary, Irving has no leverage, Durant has no “options,” as most people would understand the word, and if we wind up in a nuclear situation where KD demands a trade, the Nets would be OK because Durant’s contract is so lucrative that, by rule, the return on a trade for him would have to be about that big.

Irving has played in 103 of a possible 226 regular-season games the last three seasons. In his first year with Brooklyn, he slow-played a decision on his shoulder, which drove Nets team personnel bonkers. In his second season, he went AWOL from the team for what, a week? And this past season, it goes without saying. He was so unpredictable and so unavailable that Harden asked to be traded — again. If there is any NBA star who does not deserve to have a “list” of places his team can send him, it’s Irving.

As for LeBron and the Lakers, where this whole conversation began, Irving privately and publicly apologized to James for being such a pain in the rear towards him when they were in Cleveland together. There were all kinds of resentment from Kyrie and his camp toward LeBron, and James was blown away by Irving’s immaturity. But James has always respected Kyrie’s game and he knows how good of a pairing they are together. LeBron knows he needs playmakers and shooters around him — Russ is kind of neither now; certainly isn’t the latter — and I, to this day, do not get why LeBron thought Westbrook would be a good pairing for him.

Irving’s career has taken a sad turn since he forced his way out of LeBron’s shadow all those years ago. Who can say if Irving, as an older man, would have the patience required to return to that shadow? But nothing else has worked. None of Irving’s teams since have made it past the second round, and the 2018 Celtics don’t count because he missed the entire playoff run with knee surgeries.

Amick: I mean, other than that, Joe, these past few years have been just grand for Kyrie. Sigh.

It seems like a lifetime ago that he was burying that title-clinching jumper over Steph Curry in the ’16 finals, and the fact remains that he’s an extraordinary player who is still squarely in his prime (he turns 31 on March 23). But the rest of the league will play a massive role in what happens here.

If his only path to the Lakers is by taking a massive and unprecedented pay cut, then it’s fair to remain skeptical that he would actually do it. And if no other team of his liking starts moving heaven and earth to bring him to town, then he’ll have to take another look at whatever final offer the Nets make him and decide what comes next. The league at large — not to mention Kevin Durant — is waiting and watching.

(Photo of Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant: Brad Penner / USA Today)