Kyrie Irving has never changed his mind. After all, he didn’t have to; he just had to wait long enough for other people to change theirs.
Five months after his decision not to get vaccinated against COVID-19 led to his expulsion from Brooklyn, and almost three months after the harsh realities of the roster prompted the Nets to reinstate him as a road dog, the still unvaccinated Irving can play at home. games again. New York City Mayor Eric Adams is expected to “cancel [city’s] a private sector mandate to vaccinate specifically for artists and athletes at local venues.” The change, which comes amid a 31 percent increase in New York’s COVID cases over the past two weeks, does not apply to non-entertainment, private company, and municipal employees who have faced job losses for choosing not to getting shots – people Irving said he stood with when he refused – but this will reportedly get Kyrie back on the court at the Barclays Center to Sunday when Brooklyn hosts the Hornets.
And so ends months and months of storm and stress for Brooklyn, which has gone from title favorite to play-in contender. Irving’s decision to ineligible for 53 of the Nets’ 72 games isn’t the only reason the team has come out the last two and a half weeks with a disappointing 38-35 record – it’s easy to forget, given all that’s happened, that Brooklyn was 27-15 when Durant dislocated the MCL, and that wasn’t the only factor in the dissolution of their planned championship triumvirate. Although in both cases it played a role. Now the question is, how big is the role of the Kyrie in getting the Nets out of the hole they dug for themselves?
When he was on the court this season, Irving was down to the last ounce of the otherworldly offensive power he was when he won every NBA honors in 2020-21, averaging 28.5 points, 5.5 assists and 4.6 selection per game. He shoots just under 53 percent of his 2-pointers, on one of the toughest inside-shooting diets you’ve ever seen from a defenseman. He shoots over 10 three-pointers per 100 possessions and practices nearly 44% of them (Step/Clay/Ray territory) and 91% of his free throws. Irving also makes heavy use of the ball, carrier and facilitator, using perhaps the best handle in the history of basketball, to weave through traffic into advantageous areas while maintaining a microscopic turnover rate.
And one more note: he is now in a frenzied fire. Irving is averaging 38.7 points per game on an absurd 58/55/89 shooting in his six games over the past month — a stretch that includes a 38-point loss to the defending champion Bucks, the most efficient 50-point game in NBA history. against the Hornets, the Nets’ career and franchise record, scored 60 points on 31 shots in 35 minutes against the Magic and 43 points on eight dimes in a loss to the Grizzlies on Wednesday. Whatever you think about Kairi’s time away from the team, he was sharper than Hattori Hanzo’s steel as he strode between the lines.
It remains to be seen if Kairi will be able to continue this full-tilt bombardment as he plays every game, not in shorter bursts with longer rest periods, but even a more subdued version of the seven-time All-Star figures. to enhance every aspect of Brooklyn’s attack. Asked earlier this season about the Nets’ most-missed Kyrie, head coach Steve Nash gave reporters a blindingly obvious but no less accurate answer: “His talent. He adds things we’re bad at: penetration, shot building, shooting, spacing and all those things he brings to the table.” And, most importantly, in doing so, he lightens Durant’s creative burden.
When they played together this season, KD’s utilization rate dropped by almost 6 points and his true shooting percentage skyrocketed to a ridiculous .673 – the kind of bare efficiency you usually see with big men playing on screen and diving. who should only end layups and dunks. Even without James Harden, when Durant and Irving shared the floor, the Nets absolutely incinerated the defense and scored 130.7 points per 100 possessions, according to Cleaning the Glass, more than 11 points higher than Brooklyn’s offensive scoring record. for the entire season in 2018. 20-21, already the highest in NBA history.
Perhaps even more important to the Nets, Kyrie can lead the charge when Durant needs a breather, creating scoring opportunities without needing anyone else to set the table for him — or, indeed, do anything. besides getting out of his way.
In the minutes that Irving has spent without Durant and Harden this season, Brooklyn has scored 115.4 points out of 100, slightly less than in the NBA, according to Cleaning the Glass. 3 attacks succeeded in the whole season. Defensive failures built into the structure of most non-KD lineups mean these Kyrie-led groups only break even, but if Brooklyn takes out opponents with both stars on the floor and when Durant flies solo, it’s easy to stagnate when he sits , not half bad – and it’s a hell of a lot better than getting almost 12 points out of 100 with no stars on the court.
It’s a transformative infusion into offense that could greatly improve post-season Brooklyn on the stand now that Irving is available for every game. The Nets enter Thursday’s fight in eighth place in the East, 2.5 games behind the Raptors. 7th and 3.5 games behind the injured and struggling Cavs for sixth. Both Toronto and Cleveland have tighter closing schedules than Brooklyn; Could the doubling of Kyrie’s matchups, combined with friendly and hard-hitting play at home, allow the Nets to get ahead of one (or more) of the teams ahead of them? (Brooklyn and Toronto split their season series, and Brooklyn has a 2-1 lead over Cleveland; the Nets-Cavs on Friday, April 8, could be a big game.)
Closing the gap of 3.5 games in two weeks is not easy. Most likely, Cleveland will stay put, holding on to sixth place, while Toronto and Brooklyn will face each other in a play-off, with the winner going straight into the first-round matchup with the number East. 2 seeds. In fact, it would be in the Nets’ best interest to play the last couple of weeks to make sure they finish seventh and not eighth because that would mean the preliminary game would be in Brooklyn where Irving would now be able to play and not Toronto, the only remaining NBA city where he still can’t.
Defeating the Raptors without Irving would have been impossible; not so much when you hire Kevin Durant. Although it would be more difficult. So, for that matter, you have to go through the top three seedings – some combination of Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Boston and Miami, most likely – to get out of the East, just to end up fighting one of the monsters. at the top of the West. Like, say, the Grizzlies, who on Wednesday celebrated Kyrie’s 30th birthday and his impending full-time return by parrying 78 points from Brooklyn’s big two and losing 132 of their own – minus Ja Morant.
Nash attributed the loss in part to a lack of chemistry. “This is a new group. I think we are still learning from each other,” he told reporters. “It was a great experience for us. This is how the teams will beat us. … This is a lesson. This is an opportunity for us to see what the playoffs look like.” The worry, though, is that it’s too late for these Nets snatches to learn the necessary lessons.
Irving and Durant have played eight games together this season. Kyrie barely played Seth Curry, another important attacking element who is recovering from injury; it is still extremely unclear whether Ben Simmons is close to returning to the court. The most used five-man line-up on the Web that features Irving also included the now-departed Harden; no. 2 registered all 38 minutes together. It’s really not a deep tank to use when you’re in the guts of a game that needs to win against really good opponents that Brooklyn will have to beat in order to survive and get ahead.
The Nets may not need such a reserve; maybe the pure talent of its two main stars will suffice, with some support from Patty Mills, Bruce Brown & Co. For now, it should be. The time to develop cohesion, continuity, and retaliation has come and gone, Kyrie refusing to budge until the world around him did, and missed three-quarters of Brooklyn’s games as a result. It’s not as easy as saying that Kyrie got the Nets into this mess, so now he needs to get them out of it…but that’s not entirely true either.
Whether Brooklyn finally becomes the bona fide title contender as everyone predicted, or runs out of steam sooner than expected again, will most likely depend on how big of a difference Kyrie can make and how much one of the sport’s greatest showmen can show under with the brightest lights and on the grandest stage. After months of drama, everything is still tied to Kyrie Irving. As if it could ever be about anything else.
Subscribe to The Ringer Newsletter