The best place to merge their talents, above all, is what Durant and Irving were looking for, according to a person familiar with their plans who was not authorized to discuss them publicly. Their determination to play together proved even stronger, in the end, than many league observers expected.
The Knicks and the Nets were the two teams that could most easily accommodate the players’ salary demands, along with their shared desire to live in New York. Irving’s enthusiasm for everything else the Nets could provide the star tandem, starting with General Manager Sean Marks’s playoff-ready roster, increasingly appealed to Durant as the 2018-19 season wore on and the start of free agency grew near, according to the person.
Irving’s fondness for the Nets, which grew throughout a season of tension and disappointment with the Boston Celtics, is not merely an offshoot of his New Jersey childhood. It stems in part from a hard sell of the franchise to Irving by Spencer Dinwiddie, the Nets reserve guard, after they shared a course at Harvard in September. Dinwiddie was Irving’s classmate in a Harvard Business School program for athletes, “Crossover Into Business,” that commenced last fall and continued remotely for a semester.
It was there that the two players from disparate talent tiers began building the bond that led to a regular dialogue and, by Sunday, brought Dinwiddie to the Nets’ practice facility. Dinwiddie, who did not respond to a request for comment, was among the invitees summoned to join top team officials on the night Irving and Durant committed the next four seasons of their careers to the team that has spent virtually all of its 52-year existence in the Knicks’ shadow.
Across the country, Dinwiddie was “at the forefront” of the months long push to persuade Irving to prioritize the Nets over the Knicks and to nudge Durant in the same direction, according to one person familiar with the Nets’ pursuit of Irving who was not authorized to discuss it publicly.
The New York Times first reported last week that the Nets had also begun to heavily recruit the veteran center DeAndre Jordan, one of Durant’s closest friends, to form an incoming trio with Durant and Irving. Jordan spent the last two months of the 2018-19 season as a Knick, but two people briefed on the negotiations said Jordan also was convinced in recent days that Barclays Center would be a more hospitable backdrop for Durant and Irving than Madison Square Garden and joined the chorus promoting the Nets.
Some around the league believe Durant’s recent Achilles’ tendon tear, more than any James L. Dolan-related ineptitude, is what doomed the Knicks. Such thinking holds that if he wasn’t forced to sit out most or all of next season, Durant might have lobbied harder for Irving to follow him to the Garden. But one former N.B.A. All-Star, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss his colleagues’ plans, said Durant and Irving were already mentioning the Nets’ attractiveness as a free-agent alternative to the Knicks before the end of the regular season.
Credit should go to Marks for gradually pulling the Nets out of the muck through a string of savvy moves. Durant and Irving could reach only one conclusion upon assessing the city’s two franchises: The Knicks lag behind the Nets on the structure, roster and ready-to-contend curves — even after the Nets’ previous regime essentially surrendered control of the team’s first-round draft pick to the Celtics from 2013 to 2018 in an infamously ill-conceived trade.
Yet it’s also true that the Nets needed to secure Irving’s keen buy-in to then get Durant’s. That was the only sure way to persuade Durant, a two-time N.B.A. finals most valuable player, to spurn the security of a five-year, $221 million offer to return to the Warriors, and reject strong interest from the Los Angeles Clippers and the now-crestfallen Knicks.
It was Dinwiddie’s job to lead the recruiting of Irving. Amid a breakout season in which he averaged 16.9 points and 4.6 assists in 28.1 minutes per game and earned a three-year, $34 million contract extension in December, Dinwiddie took advantage of the league’s policy not to deem player-to-player discussions as potential tampering violations as long as a player is not acting on directives from the front office.
