The trade deadline saw a flurry of activity that drastically altered the trajectory of the season, though no team played a more central figure than the Nets. In less than one week, Brooklyn shipped away Kyrie Irving to the Mavericks and Kevin Durant to the Suns, shifting the power balance to the West and hitting the franchise reset button.
The moves, which came after each player expressed a desire to change teams, sparked plenty of reactions from around the league. Count Hall of Famer and NBA on TNT analyst Shaquille O’Neal among those who have opinions.
O’Neal was asked about the players’ requesting trades and being moved, and struck a note of personal accountability when offering his view of the situation.
“Sometimes, you have to look at yourself. KD was no problem in Brooklyn, so let’s exclude him. But Mr. Irving had a lot of stuff going on … sometimes you have to look at yourself,” O’Neal said. “I did a lot of crazy stuff [when I played], but at the end of it all, I knew my mother was watching. I tried to keep it professional.”
Irving, Durant and James Harden played just 16 games together, with Harden getting traded away last season. Irving and Durant had the Nets playing well before they were traded, and Brooklyn remains in the No. 5 spot in the Eastern Conference.
Still, O’Neal chalks their departures up to a generational difference between players from the previous era and this one.
“Sometimes, you just have to look in the mirror. You ask to go somewhere, and it don’t work out, it’s not always somebody else’s fault. See, I was raised differently,” O’Neal said. “My father didn’t play the ‘excuses’ thing. If we’re not winning, if we didn’t win, ‘It’s your fault.’”
