NBA 2022: Brooklyn Nets sack Steve Nash | Jason Gay on Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and the Nets – Code
Whatever is wrong with the Nets, and there is plenty – disaster doesn’t feel like an adequate rendering for this chronically chaotic outfit – it is not principally the doing of Steve Nash, writes JASON GAY.
Whatever is wrong with the Brooklyn Nets, and there is plenty- disaster doesn’t feel like an adequate rendering for this chronically chaotic professional basketball outfit, 2-5 entering Tuesday’s play – it is not principally the doing of Steve Nash.
But because these are impatient times, and a scapegoat must be offered, and players are expensive and/or immovable, it is Nash on his way out of town after a Tuesday uncoupling charitably rebranded as a parting of the ways.
Surely Nash, a former two-time NBA MVP known for his court vision, sensed it was coming. The job he took at the beginning of the 2020-21 season bears no resemblance to the shamble to be inherited by Brooklyn’s next hire, perhaps Ime Udoka -yes, that’s right, the Nets are reportedly interested in the head coach the Boston Celtics suspended in September for an entire season for what was murkily described as “violations of team policies.” Confronting crisis with crisis! You couldn’t make this team up if you tried.
Not long ago, the Nets gig had impressive upside: superstar free-agent signees Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, a rotation of amenable role players, and, by mid-season 2020-21, the addition of hirsute scoring savant James Harden. When assembled at full strength, these Nets looked like an all-star team unto themselves, an almost unfairly electric offence, and an obvious favourite to make the Finals.
Trouble was, they barely assembled. Durant, Irving and Harden played only 16 games together, owing to injuries and Irving’s decision to not get vaccinated against Covid-19, which, because of a NYC vax mandate, kept him off the court … until the Nets started letting Irving come back to play games on the road. Harden seemed put off by the arrangement, and after what looked like an on-court effort strike, he got himself traded to Philadelphia for Ben Simmons, a fading young star playing even less basketball than Irving.
Even still, the Nets managed to make a run. Their defenders (they exist) will point to the fact that they were a couple centimetres of a Durant footprint from sinking the Bucks in Game 7 of the 2021 Eastern Conference semi-finals. Put those Nets up against the Atlanta Hawks in the conference finals and next, the Phoenix Suns, and Brooklyn may have been fitted for a ring, not Milwaukee. If you are looking to place a pair of rose-colored Elton John sunnies upon the Nash Nets era, this is indeed a thing that almost happened.
It hasn’t felt close since then. Instead the Nash Nets have mostly seemed a step away from unravelling, whether during Harden’s Bartleby homage or Durant’s Summer 2022 Rumspringa in which he reportedly sought a trade, and, when one didn’t materialise, petitioned franchise owner Joe Tsai to remove Nash and GM Sean Marks.
Tsai, knowing the under-contract Durant had scant leverage, demurred, and the team and its principal star put out a joint statement of reconciliation. “We have agreed to move forward with our partnership,” it read. Who wasn’t fired up for the 2022-23 Nets season after reading that sizzling pledge?
We haven’t even gotten to Kyrie. Please know: I am in the camp of people who believe that Irving is a basketball virtuoso who does at least one or two things a month on the court that are difficult to describe. The problem is, Irving also does one or two inexplicable things a month off the court, too, most recently his disgraceful social media amplification of a documentary with anti-Semitism themes (“Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America”) which drew him a deserved and swift rebuke from a “disappointed” Tsai.
Now, possibly, comes Udoka to calm the turmoil — if that’s a thing that can possibly be said about a coach who still hasn’t adequately explained why he got a very public benching from his last job.
Such is life with the Nets, a team that happily abandoned Jersey for hipper Brooklyn in 2012, but has little to show after 10 years besides a hulking metal arena, a bunch of reboots, and acres of no-frills merchandise. They are now the city’s most bewildering sports franchise, a remarkable accomplishment in a town that also contains the New York Knicks. Think about that: How hard did the Nets have to work to out-screwball the Knicks?
This is no longer Steve Nash’s headache. Nobody wants to leave a job this way, especially a former star admired for his professional levelheadedness. But these Nets have problems on top of problems, very few of them quickly rectifiable — we haven’t even gotten the flurry of early season losses, or the on-court travails of Simmons. I suspect Brooklyn’s ex-coach isn’t merely feeling the sting walking out that door. He probably also feels relief.