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Brooklyn Nets Received: James Harden, Cleveland's 2024 second-round pick

Cleveland Cavaliers Received: Jarrett Allen, Taurean Prince

Houston Rockets Received: Dante Exum, Rodions Kurucs, Victor Oladipo, 2021 first-round swap with Brooklyn (unexercised), Brooklyn's 2022 first-round pick (Tari Eason selected at No. 17), Milwaukee's 2022 first-round pick (via Cleveland; became MarJon Beauchamp at No. 24), 2023 first-round swap with Brooklyn (unexercised), Brooklyn's 2024 first-round pick, 2025 first-round swap with Brooklyn, Brooklyn's 2026 first-round pick, 2027 first-round swap with Brooklyn

Indiana Pacers Received: Caris LeVert, Houston's 2023 second-round pick (became Jalen Pickett at No. 32)

After much hemming and hawing over whether there were enough touches in Brooklyn to go around for Harden, Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, the Nets appeared to be on the inevitable-championship track with their Big Three.

So much for that.

Durant, Harden and Irving appeared in just 16 total games together amid injuries and Kyrie's refusal to get the COVID-19 vaccination. It took barely a year for the entire operation to fall apart. Harden's arrival was made official on Jan. 13, 2021. The Nets shipped him off to the Philadelphia 76ers at the 2022 trade deadline.

Acquiring Harden was an extension of—and the final step in—Brooklyn's pivot away from plucky upstart to superstar-driven franchise. The gamble, on its face, was a reasonable one. In many ways, it wasn't even a gamble. When you have the opportunity to procure three top-20 players in their prime, you do it, opportunity cost be damned. Especially when two of those three stars are decidedly top-five-to-10 dudes.

Still, the Nets hitched their wagons to a trio of the league's most mercurial stars. This implosion may not have been inevitable. A global pandemic is the mother of all curveballs. But the demise of this troika—whether it was more about availability or warring principles—wasn't ever beyond the realm of possibility, either.

Brooklyn eventually undid all three of its superstar acquisitions by the 2023 trade deadline. Harden's departure, though, was by far the toughest to stomach. The Nets didn't surrender much more than cap space to land Durant and Irving in the first place. Then, when they rerouted all three, they were left holding the least impressive return for Harden—a package that amounts mostly to modest draft equity and the ghost of Ben Simmons.

I would love to give Nets general manager Sean Marks truth serum and ask him how much from this period in time he'd rewrite if given the opportunity. Would he undo the KD and Kyrie acquisitions from the jump? Simply pass on landing Harden? Opt to trade Kyrie instead of granting Harden's wish to land in Philly?

Does he think the initial Harden trade was a conspiratorial setup? That the Nets were always meant to be a layover on Harden's multi-leg trip to Philly, where his (formerly) BFF Daryl Morey awaited after a, let's say, mysterious and uncomfortable departure from Houston?