{"id":5808,"date":"2019-07-01T22:43:52","date_gmt":"2019-07-01T22:43:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/?p=5808"},"modified":"2021-01-31T21:30:52","modified_gmt":"2021-01-31T21:30:52","slug":"brooklyn-nets-sign-kevin-durant-and-kyrie-irving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/nba\/brooklyn-nets-sign-kevin-durant-and-kyrie-irving\/","title":{"rendered":"Brooklyn Nets Sign Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Kevin Durant didn’t waste any time locking down his future plans after rejecting his player’s option for another year with the Golden State Warriors. Durant will reportedly sign with the Brooklyn Nets along with Kyrie Irving and DeAndre Jordan. Durant was the most sought after of the current class of NBA unrestricted free agents despite an Achilles tendon injury that will keep him out of action for most–if not all–of the 2019-2020 season. Irving was also considered a prime catch among free agents though the expectation is that he’ll be better as a ‘complimentary piece’ and not having to be the team’s top superstar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Nets are now a +1600 NBA futures odds<\/a> choice to win the 2019-2020 Championship. Keep in mind that they’ll be playing most or all of next season without Durant–arguably the best purer scorer in the league. Brooklyn does have some nice young talent to put around their new free agent acquisitions including Caris LeVert, Spencer Dinwiddie, Joe Harris, Jarrett Allen, and Rodions Kurucs. LeVert in particular could become a future superstar. The jury is still out on how they’ll all mesh with three veteran acquisitions but they definitely have the talent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’ll be interesting to see how Irving handles being the team’s ‘go to’ scorer this year with the expectation that Durant will take over that role next season. Irving can definitely put points on the board. That’s evident from his 22.2 PPG career average. His ability to score isn’t the issue–everything else is. Irving’s greatest success in the NBA came in 2016 when he won a NBA Championship as a member of the Cleveland Cavaliers. He was a significant contributor on that team but realistically speaking any number of players could have filled his role on this LeBron James led squad. Irving requested a trade from the Cavs because he started to bristle at playing second fiddle to the best basketball player of this generation. He would end up with the Boston Celtics and in the span of two seasons completely gutted the chemistry of the team. Considering that the Celtics had among the best chemistry in the league prior to his arrival that doesn’t bode well for Brooklyn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This all leaves Brooklyn in a high risk\/high reward situation. They need Irving to be the leader of the team until Durant returns and then cede much of that control. Maybe it’ll be different this time but it could be problematic that he’ll be in the same situation he was with LeBron all over again. And what if once Durant returns he starts to lose ‘touches’ to some of the younger talent such as LeVert? Durant is a great player but it’s not evident that he’s got the same forceful personality that LeBron does and he couldn’t keep Irving in line. It’ll be an interesting couple of seasons for the long suffering Brooklyn Nets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For up to the minute NBA basketball betting odds and props, follow BetOnline.ag on Twitter<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kevin Durant didn’t waste any time locking down his future plans after rejecting his player’s option for another year with…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[134],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nba"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5808"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5810,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5808\/revisions\/5810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}