Nothing But Nets: The End of an Era in Boston
It probably wasn’t supposed to end like this for Paul Pierce. Not after so many years in Boston. It’ll be strange to see him playing alongside Kevin Garnett next season, wearing the black and white Brooklyn uniform, chasing after one more ring. It doesn’t feel right to see him playing anywhere else.
And it probably wasn’t supposed to end like this for Boston, either: the Big Three, the trio that started the wave almost every team has tried to cash in on, ending in waived no-trade clauses, expiring deals and a handful of draft picks.
How did we get here? Let’s jump back to summer 2007. Boston is coming off their worst season in recent memory: 24 wins, a winning percentage under .300. Not only were they a bad team, but they were bad at what they were trying to do: tank. Sure, at the time Doc Rivers denied it up and down, but go look at the game logs: down the stretch, Pierce was getting under 30 minutes per game and was shut down with five games left. Boston finished that season with the NBA’s second-worst record and pretty good odds for the 2007 draft.
Boston ended up picking fifth, missing out on Greg Oden, Kevin Durant and Al Horford. They took Jeff Green (and passed over Joakim Noah, Al Thornton and Marc Gasol, but that’s a story for another day). Without a franchise player after a season in the dumps, what was there to do? They blew their team up real good.
It was one of the biggest trades in NBA history: Garnett, easily one of the best players of his generation, was traded for five players and two picks. It was the largest trade where a team got only one player in return. It also completely changed the two teams. Minnesota got Gerald Green, Theo Ratliff, Al Jefferson, Sebastian Telfair and Ryan Gomes. They also went from 32 wins to 22, a drop they haven’t quite recovered from.
And Boston got the final part of their trio: in June they’d traded away a handful of players to Seattle for Ray Allen.
With a core of Allen, Garnett and Pierce, Boston would go on a tear throughout 2007-08: their 66 wins was the NBA’s best by far and they stifled teams with their defence, allowing just over 90 points per game. After a rough first-round win over Atlanta, the Celtics outlasted Cleveland and Detroit to get to the Finals, beating Los Angeles in six, winning the final game by 39 points on their home floor. It cumulated with Garnett screaming “ANYTHING IS POSSIBULLLLL!”
Maybe anything was; it was a hell of a turnaround. The Celtics went from essentially the NBA’s worst team to it’s champion in a single season thanks to a couple of savvy roster moves and a catchy media nickname: the Big Three. Soon every other contending team was trying to put their own big trio together.
The Knicks put one together, bringing Carmelo Anthony, Chauncey Billups and Amar’e Stoudemire together in 2011. So did the Lakers, bringing Steve Nash and Dwight Howard to play alongside Kobe this past offseason. And I’m sure you remember Miami’s, attempts at building a contending team, too.
The Nets tried to get into the game too. They lobbied and tried to bring Howard and Anthony aboard, luring them with postcards and pictures. Eventually, they added a couple of very good players: Joe Johnson and Deron Williams, plus young center Brook Lopez. They weren’t a bad team: this year, they won 49 games, made the postseason and narrowly lost a Game 7 to Chicago.
But in 2013, neither the Nets nor the Celtics were where they wanted to be. Each of them lost in the first round. Brooklyn’s on the way up, but lacks the talent to compete with the heavy hitters in the Eastern conference: Miami, New York, Indiana. They couldn’t even beat Chicago in seven games and the Bulls were playing without Derrick Rose (and an injured Noah to boot). Boston was heading down: the Big Three had already come apart when Allen fled to the Heat, wanting a fresh start from the aging duo of Garnett (veteran of 17 NBA seasons) and Pierce (14).
So both teams elected to blow up and rebuild. According to a widely-reported, but not yet finalized trade, Boston is going to send Garnett, Pierce and Jason Terry to Brooklyn, getting three draft picks, Gerald Wallace, Kris Joseph, MarShon Brooks, Keith Bogans and Kris Humphries in return. It’s a pretty good trade for the Nets, who suddenly have a stacked, if aging and slow, roster. If it can hold up for 82 games, it’ll leave them in a pretty good position come the spring of 2014. It also shows how impatient this team is from the top down: seemingly every year, they’re overhauling and making trades. This is not a place where chemistry will happen anytime soon.
And it’s not bad for Boston, who are starting over with a new roster and a new coach this season. It’s funny: by trading Garnett, they’ve landed back in the same position that brought him to the team: if the Celtics are anywhere near as bad as they are on paper, they’ll have a pretty good chance at landing a franchise player in the loaded 2014 draft. Let’s hope they have better luck this time.
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