The Brooklyn Nets Are Playing With Fire Emojis

The Brooklyn Nets went and did it. They have now assembled three of the most mercurial and emotionally volatile superstars in the NBA and put them together in one locker room. Not content to manage the perpetually discontent Kyrie Irving and honestly-pretty-chill-by-comparison-but-still quite-demanding Kevin Durant, New York City's only relevant NBA franchise made a blockbuster trade for James Harden, who essentially pouted his way out of Houston.

They will either win NBA titles or create spectacularly arresting documentaries together. Or both. This could be the greatest on-court trio even assembled if they are healthy or engaged or the biggest foreseeable disaster since well ... no politics here, right?

Hours ago, with Harden trying to George Constanza himself free and Irving not so much practicing as participating in Zoom meetings with Cynthia Nixon, I wondered if the line between basketball player and content creator has blurred past the point of it having any actual meaning. By afternoon, that timeline has been accelerated one Woj bomb at a time.

Is Brooklyn trying to win a championship or create our most popular reality show? And are we looking at the future here?

Laugh if you may but consider this: The dawn of the Superteam was birthed by a television special with LeBron James and Jim Gray. Is the notion of basketball players considering not only the on-court situation but the slice of the public eye not something they already do?

Given the opportunity to launch their lifestyle channel in concert with their basketball career is an appealing alternative to burning out and becoming an influencer at age 29, which is where the trend is logically headed.

Time will tell if this experiment yields positive results for the Nets. We needn't be uncertain about the certainty of Brooklyn becoming an all-time great blog fodder team. The news, notes, and takes will be pumping through the discourse so reliably we can turn our backs completely on fossil fuel.