#Nets have no excuse not to win the NBA championship

If college basketball belongs to the coaches, the pro game belongs to the men who are being coached. The NBA is said to be a players’ league for this reason:

The team with the best players almost always wins.

The Brooklyn Nets have the best collection of players entering the 2021 postseason. No, before this weekend, Kevin Durant, James Harden and Kyrie Irving had not appeared on the court together for three months. And no, their eighth game as a holy hoops trinity — an uninspiring victory over the Chicago Bulls — did not answer the chemistry questions that lingered before Harden sat out Sunday night’s 123-109 season-ending victory over Cleveland, shaped by a Harlem Globetrotters-esque play that helped clinch the No. 2 seed in the East.

Harden’s hamstring should be good to go for the first-round matchup with either Boston or Washington. At this point, only a significant injury can alter the basic truth about who the Nets are, and where they should be going. They have no good excuse not to win the NBA championship. The Knicks are a great story, and a potentially frightening opponent, but the Nets should be the ones to end New York’s biblical basketball drought.

Kyrie Irving just became only the ninth player ever to finish a season by shooting at least 50 percent from the floor, 40 percent from 3-point range, and 90 percent from the line. He was in the middle of that Globetrotters play, too, when Blake Griffin made a one-handed grab of a loose ball near the Cleveland foul line, and in one motion threw a no-look, behind-the back lob pass to his point guard. Irving made the catch beyond midcourt, and passed without dribbling to Mike James, who threw the ball off the glass and into the hands of a flying Kevin Durant, who thundered the ball home.

“Next Level,” screamed the incomparable Ian Eagle on the YES broadcast.

Exactly where the Nets are now heading.

Irving is 29. Harden is 31. Durant is 32. They still have some fuel left in their primes, and though Philadelphia and Milwaukee will represent formidable challenges, neither franchise has any championship muscle memory.

No superpower needs to be toppled on this side of the draw. LeBron James is gone from the East, and his defending champion Lakers have the look of a hangover team, leaving the West in the hands of the Utahs, Phoenixes, and Denvers — strong teams all, but beatable in a best-of-seven with Durant, Harden, and Irving.

The Nets’ Big 3 are not entirely healthy, but about as healthy as they’ll likely ever be. Sean Marks, the executive who put together this team, called Durant, Harden, and Irving “three juggernauts.” Those juggernauts are all eligible for contract extensions after the season, on top of the two years remaining on their existing deals.

“Whether or not we re-sign these guys are discussions for later on this summer,” Marks told The Post. “It hasn’t been broached yet. We all have this single-minded, steadfast approach to the task at hand here.”

The task of winning it all.

“We would not have gone about building this team without knowing these are the ramifications coming down the road here,” Marks said. “I think [owner] Joe Tsai is well aware of the window that we have here in Brooklyn, and we will continue to build and be systematic in our approach and how we go about adding to the group. That’s the part of the journey that’s so exciting to me.”

But right now, the journey is all about the next two months. In Irving, the Nets have an otherworldly point guard who has proven he can make the big Game 7 shot to win a title. In Harden, the Nets have one of the more devastating perimeter scorers of his generation, or any generation. In Durant, the Nets have a two-time champ who should go down as the second greatest small forward of all time, behind LeBron James and ahead of Larry Bird.

Those three have played in a combined 328 postseason games, a number that should trump their inexperience as a unit, especially in the frantic final possessions of an elimination game.

“I think we have the collective IQ that’s been there and done it before at some level,” Marks said. “I trust that they’ll make the right decision, whether that’s with their shot or the right read or the right pass.”

Same goes for rookie coach Steve Nash, the Hall of Famer who played in 120 postseason games. Nash never won a title as a point guard, but then again, his teams didn’t have the very best players. Close, but not quite.

Now Nash’s team has the finest collection of stars in the league, leaving his Nets with no insurmountable obstacles. … And no legitimate excuses.