In a season that started with so much promise for the championship-or-bust Brooklyn Nets, they weren't able to exorcise their playoff demons earlier this week. Before a despondent crowd inside Barclays Center on Monday night, the team was eliminated in a first-round sweep by the hated Boston Celtics. After months of drama -- on and off the court -- they exited with a whimper.
What once was a superteam -- headlined by Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving -- transformed into a super-flop. Dating back to last year's Eastern Conference semifinals, the Nets are now a pitiful 1-8 in their last nine postseason games, and an array of self-inflicted failures are to blame for their underachievement and flameout. Brooklyn's title-chasing experiment hasn't worked, so, should teams now reconsider the superteam model when constructing rosters?
"It's never over, because the second somebody gets a chance to do it again, they will. The Nets might even win a championship, a year from now, with the Big Three they still have," SI.com writer Howard Beck told the Reiter Than You show on Wednesday. "I'm not predicting it, but it's possible... Any team that has the ability -- especially in the bigger markets, and if they've got a star or two on board already -- they're going to keep trying it. I guaranteed you.
"Because having multiple top-five, top-10, top-15 players in this league has a very, very long history of success. And yes, it's often been pairs and not trios. But, just because we've gone through the last several years where we haven't had a superteam win the championship, it doesn't mean that teams won't try. Elite talent is so determinative in this league. But, that said, I like this interlude we're in, where no [superteam has won]..."
The entire NBA conversation between Beck and Reiter can be accessed in the audio player above.
You can follow the Reiter Than You show on Twitter @sportsreiter and @CBSSportsRadio, and Tom Hanslin @TomHanslin.