Nets were always ‘prepared for a rebuild’ with right Mikal Bridges offer
NY Post
LAS VEGAS — Nets GM Sean Marks has only spoken publicly once since the team traded Mikal Bridges, and team owner Joe Tsai not at all.
But multiple highly placed sources peeled the curtain back on Brooklyn’s thinking, explaining its heel turn from chasing stars to embracing a rebuild as all part of game theory.
“[The view had been] that if you’re in New York City, you can’t be a bad team, because the fan base is not going to support you. It’s such a big media market, if you’re a terrible team, everything gets very bad,” one source told The Post of the organization’s initial aversion to a rebuild.
“But you also have to think about the long term. You cannot be a mediocre team for a long time. So you have to set yourself up to either be really good, and if you only see a path to be just mediocre in the near term, then you have to consider an option that can take you to a rebuild.”
Frankly, the Nets were worse than mediocre.
They finished last season 32-50, their worst record since 2017-18.
With the Yankees on an impressive run of mostly correct decisions, there’s some reason to leave them alone and just let the best team in the American League continue to roll. But they did raise serious doubt and leave room for suggestions (and even ridicule) following maybe the most inexplicable decision of this season, or any season.
The Giants have never been 0-2 under Brian Daboll, until now. They were 2-0 and flying high in 2022 and 1-1 after a rousing comeback in Arizona in 2023. So, this represents a low point as far as early-season difficulties for Daboll and the Giants. They had no business beating the Vikings in the opener and no business losing to the Commanders in Week 2. But here they are.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Harrison Butker kept making a lonely walk to midfield after each quarter Sunday to check on the direction of the wind, which tends to swirl inside Arrowhead Stadium. He did it one last time during the 2-minute warning, when his Chiefs were trailing the Bengals by two and trying to give him a winning field-goal attempt.