The Brooklyn Nets, our weirdest contenders but

Most of us have had a bizarre buddy earlier than. An individual so odd that, if we had been to carry them round different individuals, we’d have to first clarify their essence, so to keep away from disagreeable frictions. They’re a little bit of a kook, you may say, however they imply nicely. If they are saying X, they may truly imply Y or Z, and even A, B, or C. It’s exhausting to say. It takes a number of decoding to be round them. However I promise you this a lot: they imply nicely. They’re not for everybody, although. That’s for positive. It’s okay should you don’t like them, however I really like them.

It’s individuals like these who I’m reminded of each time the Brooklyn Nets’ star guard Kyrie Irving makes the information together with his unpredictable conduct or rhetoric. Since becoming a member of his buddy Kevin Durant within the northeast, he has achieved this for the next causes: skipping the pandemic bubble season, refusing to talk to media, disappearing from crew actions for a number of weeks, reportedly suggesting NBA gamers might break from the house owners and begin their very own league, and ceremonially lighting sage courtside earlier than a preseason sport in Boston, as a method of reworking the doubtless unhealthy vibes between him and his former Celtics franchise.

Extra not too long ago, Irving tweeted “My masks is off. Now take yours off. No worry.” Most assuredly a set of platitudes with no final clear studying, Irving’s phrases are nearer to the fare of pablum-rich area rock like Coldplay—large and infinitely interpretable of their spectacle—than any form of ideological stance. Within the context of the coronavirus, nonetheless, there’s a completely different, worse understanding of his language out there, as probably the most ungenerous components of her viewers had been fast to precise.

Irving most likely meant to current a metaphor which may lead slogan-starved individuals into being their greatest selves, however who actually is aware of. “a few of you might be audacious sufficient to suppose you recognize what kyrie is speaking about?” Bomani Jones tweeted. “i might by no means assume that.” In some way, this confusion—which is rote on this planet of Kyrie—distills the essence of following his crew, who’re equal components glorious and weird. They’re past dazzling on the courtroom, so good at basketball and so stylized of their dominance that it might make you drunk, however there’s additionally all the time an impenetrable, beguiling fog of thriller round them on the similar time. Because the Nets enter the ’21-’22 season as overwhelming title favorites, my query is straightforward: has a crew ever been this good and this bizarre on the similar time?

Some don’t even scratch their heads as a lot in Kyrie’s route as they do in Durant’s. Many have plausibly argued that, from a pure abilities perspective, Durant is the best there’s ever been. Give him a wholesome stretch to finish his profession, and the resume will present it too. However he’s additionally, undeniably, so logged onto Twitter that he has modified the way in which that Being On-line is perceived at giant. Together with his gnarly, shape-shifting ethos as an web person, he’s able to altering the phrases of contemporary fame in actual time, and within the course of being emotionally bare and spiritually ragged in a approach that the NBA has by no means seen earlier than.

This isn’t to say the crew’s third star and different MVP winner, who occurs to be probably the most conventionally bizarre of the trio: James Harden. Consistently vying for historic scoring manufacturing and historic volumes of post-game partying on the similar time, Harden by default introduces himself to everybody with that large beard that immediately lets you recognize that you just’re not in for a traditional man. Add in that the crew’s recent younger coach Steve Nash has labored with the entrance workplace to develop an ever-experimental strategy to lineups within the common season, treating every sport like one other lab session, and the brew in Brooklyn turns into all of the extra uncanny. No contender has ever taken so many various viably murderous shapes in such a fast time period, whereas so fleetingly having the possibility to take their final kind.

That, presumably, will change late within the upcoming season. After a extra standard-length layoff from the earlier yr, and given all of the precautionary measures the Nets have already proven they’re prepared to take with their top-shelf expertise—plus the ridiculous veteran depth behind them—there’s little doubt that they’ll do no matter it takes to have this factor working at most energy come Spring. The problem for his or her viewers is to not neglect how severe they’re whereas they distract us with their pure shenanigans all season lengthy.