Brooklyn Nets: 3 thoughts on pushing in the chips for James Harden

1. History repeats itself for the Brooklyn Nets?

Sometimes life’s truisms leak into sports. We’re about to see if one such expression may apply to the Brooklyn Nets; Winston Churchill’s darkly predictive “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

As things stand now the Brooklyn Nets are rumored to be prepared to send a package including all of their future first-round picks and pick swaps. If the Rockets end up accepting this deal, they would essentially control most of the rest of this decade’s worth of Nets first-round draft picks, and it’s not the first time the Nets organization has sent out every draft asset that wasn’t nailed down in exchange for stars aging in their primes.

We know now that the trade that brought Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Jason Terry to Brooklyn was one of the most devastating trades in NBA history. While Harden is still playing at an All-NBA level (or at least will be when he’s in a situation that appeals to him) and not on the steep declines that Garnett and Pierce were about to begin, it’s hard to not blanch at the similarities.

The difference here is that with Kevin Durant on board, James Harden’s addition could bring the Nets an NBA championship to ease the future pain of having no draft picks for most of the rest of the decade. But if there’s any team that should cringe at the thought, it’s the one that has experienced all the worst-case scenarios within the past decade.