Another season has passed and the NBA playoffs are upon us once again. This year, the Brooklyn Nets are out of the running (they finished 11th in the East), but despite being considered a total disaster, the team they built around star Kevin Durant in 2021 looked, at one point, like it was going to be able to win the first title ever for the borough of New York.

The once gray future became bright overnight when the former MVP arrived in Brooklyn on Free Agency in 2019.

100% recovered from an Achilles tendon rupture suffered in the finals that year with the Golden State Warriors, the Nets, without a championship to their name, arrived in 2020 with one of the best scorers of all time, ready to join one of the greatest magicians the biggest basketball league in the world has ever seen play, point guard Kyrie Irving.

Seen as one of the best handlers in the game, Kyrie, champion in 2016 alongside the "King" LeBron James, now had everything to avenge the city where he grew up with the help of the "Slim Reaper". And a super-team was formed when James Harden joined the pair.

Great things were expected of the triple threat, but between many ups and downs, including injuries and problems in the locker room, the three only played 16 games together and the supposed superteam never lived up to expectations.

Despite everything, the team would end the season in second place with a 48-28 record in the Eastern Conference, one win away from the top spot. The dream was alive.

"My big foot crossed the line"

With Kyrie injured, Durant carried the Nets in the first round against the seventh-place Boston Celtics. They won five games. Giannis Antetokounmpo's Milwaukee Bucks followed.

The series against the Bucks was an intense fight to the end. In the seventh and final game, everything was wide open with seconds to go, and for a few moments Durant seemed to have done the unthinkable.

With just six seconds remaining, the Nets gave the ball to KD to solve - and he did (sort of).

Durant threw the ball with one second remaining over PJ Tucker and it found the back of the net to tie the game at 109 points. Barclays Center, the Brooklyn Nets' arena, was filled with euphoria - but it was firecrackers before the party.

The shot counted for only two points: Durant, 2.11 meters tall, wears number 55 and his giant foot was on top of the three-point line.

The game went to overtime, the Nets lost, they were eliminated from the title race and the dream never came true again.

"Kevin Durant said he initially thought his shot at the end of regulation time was a three. 'But my big foot stepped on the line,' Durant said," reporter Malika Andrews later explained.

Because of the misfortune, the Nets had to start over and rebuild their team. Durant ended up going to the Phoenix Suns, in a trade that brought Mikal Bridges, Cam Johnson, Jae Crowder and multiple draft picks to Brooklyn - a trade that put an end to one of the most promising, but also most tumultuous phases of the New York franchise.