Ben Christopher

2017 really doesn’t seem that long ago to me, but wow, how the NBA has changed. In 2017 the Cavs, who won the NBA finals the year before bringing Cleveland its first championship in 52 years, were defending champs and on their way to make a third straight NBA finals. The Nets on the other hand finished with the worst record in the league. The Cavs had their big 3- Lebron, Irving, and Love- while the Nets were looking to rebuild. The challenge? They had traded away all their draft picks for an aging Kevin Garnett and Paul Peirce years before this, and with no draft picks and no assets nobody wanted to go to Brooklyn. The trade was an absolutely disaster. The pick they would have received this year went to the Boston Celtics which turned into NBA all star, Jason Tatum.

Fast forward to 2021 Irving is still a part of a big 3, but it’s not here in Cleveland. Irving has changed teams twice and is joined by MVP’s Kevin Durant and James Harden, giving the Nets a big 3 with championship aspirations. The Cavs are in rebuild mode. We are positioned better than Brooklyn was at the time with more young talent and draft picks. I don’t believe that Cleveland will become a free agency destination but we are in a better position than Brooklyn was when we were going to 4 straight NBA finals. Things change quickly in the NBA and looking at these two franchises it’s easy to see that.

One thing that hasn’t changed? The Nets traded away all their draft picks AGAIN... Let’s see if it goes better than last time for them.