The Brooklyn Nets made probably the most surprising move of the season on Saturday morning, electing to part ways with head coach Kenny Atkinson.

The Nets released a statement (via Marc Stein of The New York Times) that said the decision was “mutual,” but come on now; we know that's not how these things work, and the fact that general manager Sean Marks said it was a decision that the organization believes is a necessary one in the very same statement shows that there was nothing mutual about this.

So what exactly did Atkinson do wrong here?

Yes, the Nets are 28-34, but they are on track to miss the playoffs in spite of not having Kevin Durant at all this season and with Kyrie Irving having played just 20 games before being knocked out for the year with a shoulder injury.

Maybe I'm missing something, but did Marks and Co. seriously believe that a roster led by Spencer Dinwiddie, DeAndre Jordan and Joe Harris could do better than this? Or is there more to this than meets the eye?

I won't pretend to know why the Nets made this decision, but when there are two star players on the same team and the coach suddenly gets fired for seemingly no reason, it's not hard to connect the dots.

Perhaps Irving and/or Durant were not entirely fond of Atkinson, and the organization wanted to cater to its new stars? I can't think of any other reason why Brooklyn would have essentially fired Atkinson (let's be honest: that's what happened).

I mean, Atkinson led a Nets team that looked like a sure-fire lottery club last season to 42 wins and a playoff appearance, and they even put up a fight against the heavily-favored Philadelphia 76ers in the first round.

When he took over Brooklyn, the Nets were still reeling from their 2013 trade with the Boston Celtics when they traded three future first-round picks for Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce (they're still kind of reeling from that trade). They had no business making the postseason as soon as 2019. And yet, they did. And what does Atkinson get? A pink slip.

Maybe something happened behind closed doors that we don't know about, or maybe the players just don't seem to like him in general. That doesn't seem to be the case, but who knows?

Again, none of us can say for sure what went down. We can only surmise and guesstimate based on the evidence we have (which isn't much).

But really, at its core, this is just another example of why the Nets aren't taken seriously. There is a reason why this franchise has never won a championship, and there is a reason it has largely been a laughing stock for most of its existence.

Good organizations don't make moves like this, and if this really was to placate Irving and/or Durant, it just shows that Brooklyn is at the mercy of its stars, which generally never ends well.

Atkinson won't be unemployed for long. That much is true. But the Nets clearly have a long way to go before they can legitimately say that they are an upper echelon NBA team.