Nets: Comparing hypothetical Kevin Durant/James Harden/Kyrie Irving trio to other teams

How will James Harden, Kyrie Irving, and Kevin Durant stack up against the league’s best, if the Nets put the trio together?

The Brooklyn Nets have their two stars in Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving to go along with an exceptionally deep roster, but Sean Marks is on the verge of blowing all of that up in pursuit of getting the game’s premier scorer to form the league’s most unstoppable trio on the offensive end.

Now that James Harden has turned down an extension from the Houston Rockets, the groundwork for a trade that would reunite Harden and KD has been laid. Doing so, and subsequently being able to adequately divvy up ball-handling duties, would give the Nets a trio unlike any we’ve ever seen from an offensive perspective.

James Harden, Kevin Durant, and Kyrie Irving would be the best trio in the league with the Nets.

In an era where two players teaming up and surrounding themselves with tertiary gunners seems to be the new norm, the amount of trios that could even hold a candle to this group is minimal.

The Milwaukee Bucks might have the reigning MVP in Giannis Antetokounmpo in addition to two All-Stars in Khris Middleton and Jrue Holiday, but those two are best served in their secondary roles, while Harden, Irving, and Durant are all more than capable of shouldering the primary scoring load on any given night.

LeBron James is in a class all his own, and adding Dennis Schroder to a Los Angeles Lakers team that already had himself and Anthony Davis on it could be lethal in the postseason given how good they can be on defense. However, they lack the perimeter scoring of Irving, Durant, and Harden, which could somehow improve under Steve Nash and Mike D’Antoni.

Should the Klay Thompson injury be less severe than originally indicated, the Golden State Warriors have the only collection of talent that could be in the same tier. Klay, Steph Curry, and Draymond Green are close to the KD-Kyrie-Harden combination because of how perfectly complementary those three are, while the ball-centric style of these three hypothetical Nets could be a bit problematic. However, at the end of the day, Brooklyn would have three of the Top 10 offensive players in the game should this deal go through, and that gives them the edge.

The Nets would basically have to part with most of their bench and most of their draft capital for the next half-decade to make this trade. However, players of Harden’s ilk don’t end up in the rumor mill every day, and Brooklyn should go forward with creating their doomsday trio by bringing the game’s best scorer to Atlantic Avenue.

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