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Kyrie Irving's Repeated Injuries Robbed Nets of Valuable Year of Development

By Alexander Wildes

Kyrie Irving will only play in 20 games in his first year with the Brooklyn Nets.
Kyrie Irving will only play in 20 games in his first year with the Brooklyn Nets. / Mike Stobe/Getty Images

Coming into the 2019-2020 NBA season, the Brooklyn Nets had one major goal: to develop their core players while integrating free agent signees into the system so that when Kevin Durant returns, the team will be ready to compete for a championship. With all of the injuries sustained by team leader Kyrie Irving, the Nets failed miserably at their task.

Irving, a six-time All-Star, has played in only 20 games this year. It was announced on Thursday that he'll miss the rest of the season.

However, even with Irving on the floor, the Nets often did not look like a quality team. Players like Caris LeVert and Spencer Dinwiddie looked much better with Kyrie off the floor. The 25-29 Nets needed this season to figure out how to make the other pieces fit with the ball-dominant Irving before Kevin Durant came back and was thrown into the fire. Instead, both Kyrie and KD will have to learn on the fly.

The Nets can still focus on developing their younger players such as Jarrett Allen and Caris LeVert as the 2020 season comes to a close, but doing so without Irving playing a prominent role is unfortunate.