Kevin Durant's time in Brooklyn ended without a championship, but no free-agent signing has changed the franchise more. Here's why the future Hall of Famer still stands above every other acquisition in Nets history.
The Brooklyn Nets have had plenty of talented players throughout franchise history, but very few actually chose to come to the organization in free agency.
Many of the franchise's biggest stars, from Jason Kidd to Julius Erving and Vince Carter, arrived through trades rather than signing on the open market. That's what makes the summer of 2019 such a defining moment in franchise history. For the first time, the Nets were viewed as a legitimate destination, and it resulted in Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving choosing Brooklyn.
In a recent article highlighting every NBA team's greatest free-agent signing, Bleacher Report named Kevin Durant as the Nets' best signing of all time. It's hard to argue with that choice.
The era didn't end with a championship, but that doesn't change what Durant meant to the franchise.
When Durant committed to Brooklyn in 2019, he was widely considered one of the two or three best players in the world. He was coming off back-to-back Finals MVPs with the Golden State Warriors and had just suffered a devastating Achilles injury during the NBA Finals. Many teams would've been hesitant to hand a max contract to a player recovering from that injury. The Nets never blinked.
When Durant finally got back on the floor, Brooklyn got exactly the player it expected.
After missing the entire 2019-20 season while recovering, Durant returned looking like... well, Kevin Durant. Across his three seasons in Brooklyn, he averaged 29.0 points, 7.4 rebounds and 5.8 assists while shooting efficiently from every level of the floor. There were stretches where he looked like the best player in basketball, and when healthy, he gave the Nets a legitimate championship ceiling.
The defining moment of his Nets career came during the 2021 playoffs.
With Kyrie Irving sidelined by an ankle injury and James Harden clearly limited by a hamstring strain, Durant almost single-handedly eliminated the eventual champion, the Milwaukee Bucks. He averaged 34.3 points, 9.3 rebounds and 4.4 assists during Brooklyn's playoff run and delivered one of the greatest postseason performances in franchise history.
His 49-point triple-double in Game 5 is still one of the best playoff games ever played by a Net. Then came the unforgettable Game 7, when Durant scored 48 points and appeared to hit the game-winning shot at the buzzer, only for replay to show his foot was barely on the three-point line. Instead of advancing to the Eastern Conference Finals, the game went to overtime, where Milwaukee eventually prevailed.
One shoe size is all that separated the Nets from potentially changing NBA history.
Of course, Durant isn't the only worthy candidate.
Kyrie Irving deserves serious consideration after arriving alongside Durant in 2019. While his time in Brooklyn was filled with injuries and off-court controversy, there's no denying how spectacular he was when he actually played. Irving averaged nearly 27 points per game as a Net and formed one of the league's most dynamic offensive duos with Durant.
You could also make cases for players like Patty Mills, whose professionalism and shooting made him a valuable contributor during the 2021-22 season, or Armen Gilliam, who quietly put together three productive seasons after signing with New Jersey in the early 1990s. Todd MacCulloch helped the Nets reach their first NBA Finals in 2002, while Andray Blatche became one of the league's better bench scorers after arriving in Brooklyn.
None of those players, though, changed the direction of the franchise the way Durant did.
His decision to sign with the Nets instantly made Brooklyn one of the biggest stories in the NBA. National television games became the norm. Championship expectations replaced rebuilding conversations. For the first time in a long time, Brooklyn wasn't chasing stars. Stars were choosing Brooklyn.
Did the era end the way anyone hoped? Absolutely not.
Injuries, bad luck, and roster instability prevented the Durant-Irving-Harden trio from ever reaching its full potential. They played just 16 games together, making the "what if?" surrounding that team one of the biggest in recent NBA history.
Still, judging the signing solely by how it ended ignores everything Durant accomplished while wearing a Nets uniform.
He gave Brooklyn the highest ceiling it has ever had, produced some of the greatest individual performances in franchise history and came within inches of leading the organization to its first conference finals appearance since moving to Brooklyn.
No free-agent signing in franchise history has matched what Durant brought to Brooklyn. Even without a championship banner to show for it, Kevin Durant is still the greatest free-agent acquisition in Nets history.
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