Brooklyn Nets guard Spencer Dinwiddie played an interesting yet vital part in the recruitment of Kyrie Irving and consequently Kevin Durant, making his team emerge from being merely outsiders to frontrunners in the race for two of the top talents available in this free agency.
According to Marc Stein of The New York Times, Dinwiddie was “at the forefront” of a “monthslong push to persuade Irving to prioritize the Nets over the Knicks and to nudge Durant in the same direction.” The ploy obviously worked:
Irving’s fondness for the Nets, which grew throughout a season of tension and disappointment with the Boston Celtics, is not merely an offshoot of his New Jersey childhood. It stems in part from a hard sell of the franchise to Irving by Spencer Dinwiddie, the Nets reserve guard, after they shared a course at Harvard in September. Dinwiddie was Irving’s classmate in a Harvard Business School program for athletes, “Crossover into Business,” that commenced last fall and continued remotely for a semester.
It was there that the two players from disparate talent tiers began building the bond that led to a regular dialogue and, by Sunday, brought Dinwiddie to the Nets’ practice facility. Dinwiddie, who did not respond to a request for comment, was among the invitees summoned to join top team officials on the night Irving and Durant committed the next four seasons of their careers to the team that has spent virtually all of its 52-year existence in the Knicks’ shadow.
While many attributed Irving's willingness to sign with the Nets to the proximity of his hometown of West Orange, New Jersey, it would take way more than merely being a ride away from his roots to mortgage his four-year future and the prime of his basketball career with the Nets.
Dinwiddie was that person behind the scenes doing all the convincing and persuading to land the franchise's biggest summer, turning the Nets from postseason chasers to title contenders.
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