The love affair is over. Now comes business.
The Nets season was indeed special. It wasn’t just that they defied even their coach’s expectations, won 42 games —their first winning season since Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett played together, won the sixth seed, etc. It was that the Nets as an organization rose to a new level in the estimate of players, pundits, et al. The Nets now look like a destination (something that wasn’t hurt by Sean Marks visit to the refs locker room or Joe Tsai’s tweet protesting Marks’ fine.)
But the reverse side of that is that the Nets will now have big decisions on who to keep, who to go after.