Net(s) gain

Wait ... what?  The who, signed whom?

So much for the art of sleuthing by the basketball media, as the NBA's Silly Season -- aka, NBA free agency -- got down and got funky Sunday. All that talk about Kawhi and Kevin Durant teaming up to Superfriend y'all, and it was KD and Kyrie all along. Also D'Andre Jordan. And they went where?

No, not to the Knicks.  To those other guys, across the river from the NBA's seventh circle of hell.

The Nets!

Or, as a lot of folks no doubt punctuated it: The Nets?

Yes, the Nets, a storied franchise if the story is a three-page pamphlet. The last time the Nets were relevant, Julius Erving was playing for them. Also Billy "Whopper" Paultz, basketball immortal. Also the Taylors, Brian and Ollie, and a guy name John Williamson, and another guy named Bill Melchionni, another basketball immortal.

All of which should ease the fears of  the pearl-clutchers whose dire vision for the League is every free agent flocking to the glamour franchises. The Nets, after all, are no one's idea of a glamour franchise. What KD, Kyrie and D'Andre all winding up there demonstrates is that no scenario in the age of unrestricted free agency is either permanent or absolute, because motivations vary depending on circumstance.

When KD signed with Golden State, for instance, it was because he wanted rings. Now he's got a couple, so his motivation has changed. He wants a team all his own now, and the Nets were willing to pony up a max deal to give it to him.

And Kyrie?

Exactly the opposite. He went to Boston from Cleveland because he wanted to be The Man. Having discovered it wasn't all it was cracked up to be (and that he wasn't very good at it), he's back to being Robin again to someone else's Batman.

Robin, after all, is still a pretty sweet gig.

And lest anyone succumb to back-in-the-day nostalgia ("Back in the day, guys didn't chase rings and/or money the way they do now"), remember that nostalgia carries with it its own delusions. Which is to say, we tend remember things the way we want to remember them, and not necessarily the way they were.

This superteam craze, for instance, is nothing new. Fifty years ago, the Los Angeles Lakers swung a deal to bring Wilt Chamberlain to town, giving them a lineup with three future Hall of Famers (Wilt, Jerry West, Elgin Baylor). Mainly this was because they were sick of losing to the Celtics, and wanted a ring of their own -- which Wilt and Co. delivered in 1972.

And, same time frame, don't forget the Bucks trading for Oscar Robertson to pair with Kareem and deliver them a title. Which of course Oscar and Kareem did in '71.

Or how about Philly bringing aboard ABA superstars Erving and George McGinnis? Five years after the 76ers put up the worst season league history to that point, Dr. J and Big George got them to the NBA Finals, where they were upset by the Bill Walton Trail Blazers.

Same stuff. Different day.

The difference, of course, is one of execution, not motivation. The Lakers, the Bucks, the Sixers: Those mega-deals were engineered by management. Today they're engineered by the players, which is what really provokes all the hand-wringing. Whatever will become of a league where the players have a say in where they work?

Nothing that hasn't happened before, boys and girls.