NEW YORK — If you’d tuned out all Nets news in mid-July, and finally tuned back in late Wednesday, in time to catch the final minutes of their season opener, you might reasonably have concluded that the much-hyped Nets-pocalypse had indeed occurred.
The scoreboard showed a 19-point deficit to the Pelicans. Kevin Durant was not on the floor. Nor were Kyrie Irving or Ben Simmons, their places filled by Cam Thomas, Yuta Watanabe and Edmond Sumner. It was as if the Nets had indeed suffered the summer implosion that everyone expected in the wake of Durant’s trade demand.