When taking stock of the Brooklyn Nets and whatever the hell has taken place within the organization over the last 31 months, it feels fair to invoke the poem “Ozymandias,” which became a part of broader pop culture after Breaking Bad gave a key episode that same name back in 2013.
The poem itself, an 1818 work by Percy Bysshe Shelley, describes a wrecked statue in a vast desert, and is meant to illustrate the downfall of an overly arrogant, once-powerful juggernaut. But forcing that poetic fit—much like the Nets forced their on-court one between Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and James Harden—overlooks the fact that Brooklyn never managed to win it all.