NEW YORK – Having superstar talent is the only sure-fire way to win a championship in the National Basketball Association. It has been nearly 20 years since a team won a championship without at least one superstar player, and usually it takes two.

So when Kyrie Irving, a virtuoso at point guard, and Kevin Durant, one of the smoothest scorers in the game, chose the Brooklyn Nets in free agency during the summer of 2019, they seemed to be sprinkling onto the Nets the sort of pixie dust necessary to turn a team into real title contenders.

And so, for the past 3½ years, the Nets firmly set their sights on a championship that, they believed, the arrivals of Irving and Durant had put within reach. But instead of taking incremental steps towards that goal, they found that their path featured endless detours.

They tried desperately to make the most of having two players as gifted as Durant and Irving, giving up draft picks and promising young players to acquire a third superstar and create one of the greatest collections of talent ever seen in the league. They changed coaches and even disciplinary philosophies to try and make this work.

For the past few months, the Nets seemed to have found some semblance of stability. They were winning games, Irving seemed to be in a good place and even Durant’s knee injury, while detrimental, was not catastrophic. But then their fragile peace fell apart again.

Irving requested a trade last week and, on Sunday, the Nets agreed to a deal that will send him to the Dallas Mavericks, which was confirmed by his new team on Monday. In return, the Nets will receive two players, a distant first-round draft pick and multiple second-round picks.

They never got to enjoy the fruits of such a big free-agency score, and now their future is uncertain.

Only three weeks ago, Irving was lauding the Nets’ cohesion. Reporters had asked him what would keep the Nets from struggling after Durant’s injury the way they did in 2022 when Durant was out.

“I’m consistently in the line-up, that helps,” Irving said. He said the team did not have anyone who was “halfway in” and added: “And there’s just a primary focus on the big picture here.”

He seemed to be taking a shot at James Harden, who spent about a year with the Nets before asking for a trade.

The Nets acquired Harden from Houston through a four-team trade in January 2021 as part of their efforts to make the Durant and Irving experiment work.

They gave up a king’s ransom to do it – the package included three first-round picks, four pick swops and Jarrett Allen, a talented young centre who has found success, including an All-Star selection, in Cleveland.

At first, the trade seemed like a no-brainer. They were all perennial All-Stars. Durant and Harden had won the league’s Most Valuable Player Award. Durant and Irving had won championships.

Who could beat this team? At least one article declared that they might be the greatest basketball team ever assembled.

They took the eventual champions Milwaukee Bucks to seven games in the conference semi-finals in 2021 and seemed poised for domination in the 2021-22 season.

But Irving barely played in the 2021-22 season because of his decision not to be vaccinated against the coronavirus.

Harden seemed irritated with Irving’s inconsistent availability, and once joked that he would inoculate Irving himself.

But in an interview with FoxSports.com in December, Harden mentioned two other reasons that made his time in Brooklyn difficult – he was never fully healthy and he struggled with the organisation.

“It was just, there was no structure,” he said. “And even superstars, they need structure. That’s what allows us to be the best players and leaders for our respective organisations.”

The Nets traded Harden in February 2022, and got back Ben Simmons who, in his 37 games for the Nets, has struggled to contribute.

The Harden experiment had failed, and Irving was available only some of the time for most of the season. New York City’s private-sector vaccine mandate made him ineligible for home games until it was lifted, and the Nets did not let Irving play part-time until they relented at mid-season.

The Boston Celtics swept the Nets out of the first round of the 2022 play-offs.

The chaos was all too much for Durant, who asked for a trade in June and was given permission to seek one but could not find one to which the Nets would agree. He returned to the Nets, ready to move on. Where Durant stands now is uncertain. It is fair to wonder if he will try again to be traded.

If the Nets let it happen this time, it will fully end another star-laden era that never really got off the ground. NYTIMES