The 2014 Nets: The Biggest Failed Superteam

Over the past year and a half, Luka Doncic being traded to the Los Angeles Lakers has dominated the conversation about the worst trades in NBA history.

Before the Luka trade, though, another deal was almost universally brought up whenever the subject came up: the Brooklyn Nets' 2013 trade for Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Jason Terry.

The trade itself is infamous. The Nets gave up multiple first-round picks for a group of aging veterans, and those picks eventually became a major part of the Boston Celtics' next championship team.

But the trade was really only the beginning of the problem.

The 2014 Brooklyn Nets were supposed to be the payoff.

Instead, they became one of the biggest failures of the NBA's win-now era.

Brooklyn had spent years trying to turn the franchise around. After struggling through the late 2000s and early 2010s, the Nets had a new owner in Mikhail Prokhorov, a move to Brooklyn on the horizon and a clear desire to become a major player in the NBA.

The Nets eventually acquired Deron Williams in 2011, traded for Joe Johnson and re-signed Williams to a massive contract. They also brought in Gerald Wallace and continued adding veterans.

There was finally some progress.

Brooklyn won 49 games during the 2012-13 season and earned the fourth seed in the Eastern Conference. The Nets even came back from a 3-1 deficit against the Chicago Bulls in the first round before ultimately losing Game 7 at home.

It wasn't a championship team, but it was good enough for the Nets to believe they were close.

So they decided to go all in.

That summer, Brooklyn sent three unprotected first-round picks, a pick swap and several players to Boston for Pierce, Garnett and Terry.

At the time, the move wasn't nearly as ridiculous as it looks now.

Pierce was 35. Garnett was 37. Terry was 36. They obviously weren't the players they had been during Boston's championship run, but they were still established veterans with playoff experience.

Put Pierce and Garnett alongside Williams, Johnson and Brook Lopez, and it was easy to imagine the Nets competing for the Eastern Conference.

On paper, the roster looked like a contender.

Then the season started.

The Nets opened the 2013-14 season 10-21.

Injuries were a major problem, but the issues went beyond injuries. The team was old, lacked depth and struggled to find consistency. Jason Kidd, who had retired as a player only months earlier, was suddenly trying to coach a roster that had championship expectations attached to it.

There was even a point when Pierce was moved to the bench.

That pretty much summed up how far the team was from what Brooklyn had envisioned.

To their credit, the Nets eventually turned things around.

Brooklyn won 10 of its first 12 games after the calendar flipped to 2014 and gradually climbed the Eastern Conference standings. The Nets finished the regular season 44-38.

That sounds respectable until you remember what this team was supposed to be.

They had won 49 games the previous season without Pierce and Garnett.

After making one of the biggest win-now moves in NBA history, they got worse.

Brooklyn also lost Brook Lopez for the rest of the season after he underwent surgery on his left ankle. That was a massive blow to a team that already had very little room for error.

Still, the Nets made the playoffs.

And somehow, things got even more interesting.

Brooklyn drew the Toronto Raptors in the first round. Toronto was the younger, less experienced team, and the Nets' veteran core was expected to have the advantage.

The series went seven games.

Brooklyn eventually found itself with a chance to close it out in Toronto, but the Raptors came all the way back and took a one-point lead late in the fourth quarter.

Then Paul Pierce did exactly what Brooklyn had brought him there to do.

Kyle Lowry drove toward the basket with the Raptors trying to win the series, and Pierce came over to block his shot.

The Nets survived.

For a moment, it looked like maybe the gamble could still work.

Then they ran into Miami.

The Heat had LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh and were coming off four straight trips to the NBA Finals. Brooklyn had swept Miami during the regular season, winning all four meetings, so there was at least some reason for optimism.

It didn't matter.

Miami won the series 4-1.

The Nets' superteam experiment was over.

And the fallout came quickly.

Pierce left Brooklyn after just one season, signing with the Washington Wizards. Garnett was eventually traded back to Minnesota. Jason Kidd was traded to Milwaukee after reportedly wanting more control over the Nets' basketball operations.

The team that was supposed to be competing for a championship was suddenly falling apart.

Meanwhile, Boston was getting better.

The picks Brooklyn had surrendered started turning into something much more valuable than the aging veterans the Nets had received in return.

One of those picks became Jaylen Brown.

Another became Jayson Tatum.

Brown and Tatum eventually became the foundation of a Celtics team that won an NBA championship.

That's the part that makes the Nets' decision so painful.

It wasn't simply that Brooklyn traded away some picks and ended up with an aging roster.

The Celtics used those picks to build the next great version of their franchise.

Brooklyn, meanwhile, won just 38 games the following season and lost in the first round. The Nets didn't make the playoffs again until 2019.

The entire plan had collapsed in just a few years.

And that's why the 2014 Nets are still relevant today.

The Luka Doncic trade has brought the idea of the "worst trade in NBA history" back into the spotlight, but there is an important difference between the two situations.

The Nets' decision was terrible in hindsight, but you could understand what they were trying to do.

They had a 49-win team. They had an owner willing to spend. They had a new arena in Brooklyn. They had established stars in Williams and Johnson. They believed adding Pierce and Garnett could push them over the top.

There was a vision.

It just didn't work.

That's what makes the story so interesting more than a decade later.

The Nets weren't trying to build a bad team. They were trying to build a championship team and believed they were only a couple of moves away.

Instead, they sacrificed their future for a present that never arrived.

And the consequences lasted much longer than the one season Pierce and Garnett spent together in Brooklyn.

The 2014 Nets are a reminder of just how dangerous going all in can be in the NBA.

A championship window can disappear because of injuries, age or simply because the team isn't as good as everyone thought it was.

Once you've traded away your future, though, there isn't much you can do about it.

More than 12 years later, Brooklyn's decision to go all in remains one of the clearest examples of what happens when the gamble doesn't pay off.

The Nets wanted to win now.

Instead, they spent years paying for it.

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