How Nets' additions of Durant, Irving dramatically alter NBA balance of power

With free agents Kyrie Irving, Kevin Durant and DeAndre Jordan committing to the team, the Nets had the greatest day in their history Sunday. Almost exactly six years after one of the worst trades in NBA history, when the Nets traded three first-round picks for Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce, Brooklyn added a two-time Finals MVP, a former first-team All-NBA center, and a 27-year-old point guard who has won a title and made six All-Star teams. The outlook has never looked brighter for the Nets as they finally step well outside the shadow of the Knicks, their cross-borough rivals.

The Nets also managed to add veteran guard Garrett Temple to what was the sixth-best team in the East last season, just for the price of cap space. Brooklyn will send all-star D’Angelo Russell to the Warriors in a sign-and-trade, but the Nets still have Sixth Man of the Year candidate Spencer Dinwiddie, three-point champion Joe Harris, and promising 21-year-old center Jarett Allen. They’re uniquely suited to cover for a rehabbing Durant for a season, with Caris Levert and Harris at small forward, and tall European rookies Dzanan Musa and Rodions Kurucs off the bench. Plus, Temple can fill in at all three wing positions.

Kyrie should fit right in with Brooklyn’s fast-paced, three-point-heavy offense. Until KD returns, Irving should have the greenest of green lights, but he can also defer to Dinwiddie to carry the scoring load. Jordan's signing may be because of his friendship with Durant, but he also provides the size that was sorely lacking in the Nets’ first-round loss to Joel Embiid and the 76ers, who outrebounded the Nets by 12 boards per game. This is suddenly a long, big team, with everyone but Kyrie standing 6-foot-6 or taller.

These moves have the extra benefit of weakening the Nets’ rivals. New Celtic Kemba Walker is a nice player, but he’s not nearly the shooter Irving is (35.7% career from three, compared to Kyrie’s 39%). He also has played only 11 career playoff games to Kyrie’s 61. After a season of rumors that Kyrie and Durant wanted to team up on the Knicks, the Nets landed the pair, and picked up former Knick Jordan for good measure. Now the Knicks have missed out on their top targets, after dealing their 23-year-old franchise player Kristaps Porziņģis to clear cap space for this summer. Julius Randle and Taj Gibson are New York's unimpressive additions.

How do the Nets stack up with other Eastern Conference contenders? All Canada is waiting on Kawhi, who single-handedly makes the Raptors a title favorite, but without him, Brooklyn is better. The revamped 76ers kept Tobias Harris, added Al Horford, lost J.J. Redick to Zion Williamson and the Pelicans, and flipped Jimmy Butler to Miami for Josh Richardson. They solved their backup center problem, and strengthened the defense, but that still leaves them unsettled and short of a shot creator, unless Ben Simmons decides he’s willing to shoot next season. And the Bucks kept most of their 60-win core together, losing only Malcolm Brogdon. Are the Nets better than the Bucks right now? No, but they may well be once Durant is back in a year, which is also when Giannis Antetokounmpo must decide whether to commit to Milwaukee long term.

The Warriors looked liked big losers until they reportedly acquired Russell. (The deal is not yet finalized.) Even with a 23-year-old all-star filling in for Klay Thompson, Golden State won't be favored to go back to its sixth straight NBA Finals. It's not clear how Russell will fit long term, but he should replace some of Durant's scoring and might someday be known as the Spash Nephew. Without KD, Golden State has a huge hole at small forward, with only the mid-level exception available to replace one of the greatest players in NBA history.

The decline of Golden State is one reason the other big winner is the Lakers, who now have a much smaller Warriors-sized obstacle in front of them in the Western Conference. Durant is out of the West, firmly entrenched in the East for the next four years. The Lakers' biggest Western rival might be the Utah Jazz, who traded for Mike Conley and added Bojan Bogdanovic, Joe Ingles’ spiritual brother in three-point shooting and male pattern baldness. Portland added Kent Bazemore and Rodney Hood, which is about as much as it could have hoped for this summer, but doesn’t quite challenge a three-star Lakers squad.

That’s why Eastern Conference as a whole is also a big winner today. The most significant free agent to go from East to West was Bogdanovic, or possibly the aging Redick. Meanwhile, Durant went East, Brogdon stayed East in Indiana, and the Bucks kept Khris Middleton, Brook Lopez, and George Hill. Should Kawhi stay put in Toronto, the Eastern Conference may be stronger than the Western Conference for the first time since the ‘90s.

Who were the big losers? It all depends on where the final top players end up, but right now, the Clippers seem to have all their eggs in the Board Man’s basket. If they strike out, the Clippers may be ready to roll their cap space over to 2020. The Knicks have been worse than the Nets for most of the past two decades, but now they’re less famous than the Nets, something owner James Dolan might hate even more. The next move by Nets GM Sean Marks should be offering Spike Lee courtside seats at the Barclays Center. And it’s also a tough day for Nicolaus Copernicus, whose heliocentric model of the solar system will receive greater skepticism now that flat-earther Kyrie is playing in the nation’s media capital.

The Nets might not be the best team in the East yet, but they’re clearly in the top three, an amazing accomplishment given where they were five years ago, with no draft picks, cap room, or young talent outside of Lopez. If Durant’s Achilles can recover half as well as the Nets did from their salary cap hell, the Nets are going to be a serious threat in a year.