Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.

The Brooklyn Nets are the latest to learn that painful lesson.

Kevin Durant, a basketball god and the NBA's single greatest phenom since LeBron James, wants out of Brooklyn.

Durant's trade request comes on the back of the Nets playing hardball with Kyrie Irving, the ankle-breaking, sage-lighting, quicksilver point guard with handles so bewitching they can only be described as the centrepiece of a deal with the devil.

I mean, seriously. Irving is like a magician with a deck of cards. Pick a card, any card, he says. But no matter what card you pick, through some sleight of hand, it's always the joker, and before the man who's defending him realises it, that card is smoke, and so is Irving. But enough about Kyrie's handles.

The Nets now find themselves in the middle of a desert with two disgruntled superstars who will likely be traded in the coming months.

Naturally, all sides have caught strays since Durant requested a trade.

Durant has been accused of "running from the grind" and "failing to be the bus driver on a championship team" (whatever that means). Irving has been accused of setting fire to the Nets like he did with his little bundle of sage, incinerating any championship aspirations franchise owner Joe Tsai had with this roster.

Between the James Harden trade and the other James Harden trade, the Nets have gone from dreaming about a championship to lying face down in the desert.

Now here's where things get tricky.

Kevin Durant still has four fully guaranteed years on the $198 million extension he signed last summer, so the Nets think they have leverage over where Durant lands. Irving opted into his $37 million player option so he's getting paid regardless, but the Nets reportedly don't want to keep him around after *points everywhere* what happened during the season.

The Nets worked overtime to recruit the two free agents to Brooklyn by portraying themselves as the Soldier Boy to the New York Knicks' Homelander.

They signed DeAndre Jordan on the whims of Durant and Irving, then fired head coach Kenny Atkinson (who coached a pretty fun team) because he chose to start Jarrett Allen over Jordan, then handed Steve Nash his coaching debut, whose gameplan in the playoffs ended up being "Let's play Durant for 48 minutes straight after an Achilles rehab season," which ended in a postseason sweep.

The Nets signed up for all of that but chose to draw the line when it came to Irving's contract extension.

Durant, of course, took umbrage at this. The superstar duo chose Brooklyn as their franchise, not the other way around. Durant essentially proclaimed Irving as his ride or die. You could say the Nets had to acquiesce to their demands.

Well, why draw the line now?

All the noise coming out of Brooklyn is that Nets owner Joe Tsai would rather have a team he's "proud to own" than suffer through this again.

Tsai, though, is only just learning what it means to be an owner in a players' league.

Players, especially ones with transcendental talent like Kevin Durant, are not mere employees of the organisation anymore. They have as much autonomy over their livelihood as anyone in the league.

In this era, it's up to the franchises to make sure they're attractive destinations to players. That's how Brooklyn convinced Harden to jump ship from Houston, and it's also how the Knicks have failed to land top free agents for what feels like forever, even with the allure of playing at Madison Square Garden. (Gilbert Arenas's 5 Free Agency Truths for GQ sheds more light on this).

Trading Durant, a once-in-a-lifetime scorer, two-time Finals MVP and a basketball titan, isn't really a good look on a franchise that had hopes of modelling itself into a diet Golden State Warriors.

The Nets signed up for a Durant-Irving core, two generational superstars who routinely drop highlights that could hang in the Louvre. They signed up for Irving as Durant's running mate and everything that comes with it, street-ball fakes and vaccination warts and all.

They're now left with the illusion of leverage, the hope that Rudy Gobert's trade to Minnesota jacks up any potential haul for Durant, and the Los Angeles Lakers as the only viable destination for Irving. And, of course, Ben Simmons.

With Durant and Irving, the Nets were longingly eyeing a dynasty. Without them, they're looking at one of the NBA's worst HR blunders in recent history.

Not to worry, though. They won't hold that distinction for too long. Not with the Knicks in town.