This year was supposed to be a celebration for the Brooklyn Nets, as the team marked 10 years of NBA basketball in New York’s most populous borough with dreams of potential championship contention.
But after a little more than two years helming the team, head coach Steve Nash is heading from the shores of Manhattan back home to Manhattan Beach — the one on the West Coast, that is.
The Hall of Fame player and the team “mutually parted ways” on Tuesday after a 2-5 start — a painful beginning to a season where the Nets were expected to be among the top in the Eastern Conference.
When Nash was named head coach of the team in 2020, the Nets appeared to be on the verge of a deep playoff run, if not a championship. The roster featured sure-fire Hall of Famer Kevin Durant, crafty scoring guard Kyrie Irving, and burgeoning young players like Caris LeVert and Jarrett Allen. Those youngsters later became the centerpieces of a trade for former MVP guard James Harden, assembling — on paper — perhaps the most talented "Big 3" in league history.
But Durant, Irving and Harden only played a little more than a dozen games together before Harden was shipped to Philadelphia for Ben Simmons, a talent with top-level potential seeking redemption.
Just over two years later, after a first-round sweep by the Boston Celtics, an ultimately rescinded trade demand from Durant and perennial controversy from Irving, Nash was the most expendable.
“To be quite frank, the team was not doing what it was supposed to be doing,” Nets General Manager Sean Marks told the press on Tuesday. “We’ve fallen from our goals, from meeting our goals, and it was time now because we still have lofty aspirations for what we need to get to.”
But Nash isn’t the only reason the Nets are closer to a flaming barge in the East River than a top-flight title contender: the team’s been beset with complications and controversies from the moment Durant (then hobbled with an Achilles tendon tear) agreed to a sign-and-trade deal from the Warriors to the Nets in 2019. And if you look, it’s not hard to see patterns in the Nets’ Brooklyn history.
How did they get here?
Brooklyn was in a bad way from 2016 to 2019. The Nets bottomed out for three seasons straight, only a few years removed from mortgaging its future with a bushel of players and draft picks for aging Boston Celtics stars Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce to complement a “Big 3” of Deron Williams, Joe Johnson and Brook Lopez. They were a splashy group of stars that fizzled out before reaching their NBA title aspirations.
But a 2017 trade for young Los Angeles Lakers star D’Angelo Russell, plus the addition of a few solid young players, put the Nets on track to make a surprise playoff appearance. That, coupled with an ownership change to Alibaba billionaire Joe Tsai, put the team in a position to spend big money acquiring Durant. That same summer, Irving, then with the Celtics, signed a reported four-year, $136 million contract with Brooklyn to play alongside Durant.
But the 2019-20 season wasn’t a turnaround year, even before the NBA shut down amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Durant’s Achilles injury in the 2019 NBA Finals kept him out for the entire campaign, while Irving was shut down with a shoulder injury not long before the league’s pandemic pause. Though the team was able to make the playoffs in the NBA’s isolated Florida “bubble” complex, they were bounced in the first round.
In 2020, the Nets signed Nash to be the team’s head coach, filling the void created when then-coach Kenny Atkinson was fired after leading the team to a 118-190 record in little more than four seasons. Reports at the time suggested “some of the players wanted [Atkinson] gone.”
One more thing about Nash’s hiring: During the first episode of Durant’s “The ETCs” podcast, Irving said that he “(didn’t) really see us having a head coach,” adding that “KD could be a head coach, I could be a head coach.” He also added that Nash would “change the way we see coaches.”
Fourteen games into the 2020-21 season, the Nets acquired former MVP Harden from the Houston Rockets in a massive four-team trade. Together, the three were tabbed for the 2021 NBA All-Star Game, and the Nets were perceived as a roaring success.
That season, Irving was largely a part-time player due to local COVID-19 vaccine mandates. He declined the vaccine for a host of publicly stated reasons, including solidarity with other people who couldn’t take the vaccine and were out of a job owing to local vaccine mandates. Without a full series of vaccinations, Irving would be forced to sit out home games at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center arena.
Brooklyn made it to the 2021 Eastern Conference Finals, only to lose to the Milwaukee Bucks by barely a toe’s length: A three-point shot attempt with 1.6 seconds left in regulation was ruled a two-pointer when Durant’s foot was found to be just touching the three-point line. They lost the game, and the series, in overtime; the Bucks eventually defeated the Phoenix Suns in six games to become the 2021 NBA Champions.
Things would somehow get rougher for the Nets soon after. During the 2021-22 season, Harden was reportedly unhappy with Irving’s part-time status, which — when combined with another, shorter-term injury to Durant — put more of the game load on his shoulders. According to The Athletic, Harden wanted to be part of a “three-headed monster,” rather than the offense's focal point, as he was in Houston.
By February, Harden wanted out. He was shipped to the Philadelphia 76ers in exchange for Ben Simmons, whose career has been marked with incredible ball-handling, passing and all-NBA-level defense – and marred by injuries and playoff flameouts.
For all of Simmons’ talent on the court, even his then-head coach, Doc Rivers was unable to say if he thought Simmons could be the point guard on a championship team. Meanwhile, Simmons missed the entirety of the 2021-22 season due to back injuries, mental health issues and by holding out after demanding a trade from the team.
The Nets ended the 2021-22 season seventh in the Eastern Conference, and were swept in the first round of the playoffs by the Boston Celtics. After the series loss, Irving was asked about a potential contract extension and plans to stick around with Durant.
“When I say I’m here with Kev, I think that it really entails us, you know, managing this franchise together alongside Joe [Tasi] and Sean [Marks],” Irving told reporters.
That off-season, Irving didn’t get his extension offer from the team. Durant then asked out, according to The Athletic’s Shams Charania, reportedly demanding either a trade — or the firings of Nash and Marks. (Somewhere, Kenny Atkinson is grimacing.) Durant was connected to teams across the league, including Phoenix, Miami and Toronto, but reports suggested he might favor going to Boston owing to his close relationship with then-Celtics head coach Ime Udoka.
Durant got neither. Instead, on Aug. 23, the Nets released a statement from Marks, saying that he, Nash and Tsai met with Durant and agreed to “move forward with our partnership.”
A 'stable championship culture'
At the Nets’ preseason media day in October, Irving told reporters that he “gave up four years, $100-something million deciding to be unvaccinated, and that was the decision,” that he “had to deal with that real life circumstance of losing my job for this decision.” Durant told reporters that he wanted to “be in a place that’s stable and trying to build a championship culture.”
The summer, Irving told reporters, was a “cluster****.”
Nash tried waving things away, telling reporters that “families go through adversity” and “disagreements.”
“We all have expectations and when we get dinged up like we did last year. Everyone’s disappointed. We cleared the air and spoke and we got on the same page,” Nash said.
The Nets didn’t appear to be on the same page throughout the first seven games of the season. Brooklyn scored well, but the leaky defense sits near the bottom of the NBA for the third-worst net rating (the sum of values showing the points made and allowed by a team per 100 possessions) in the league. Durant is still a top-5 player in the NBA, but Simmons looks unable — or at least unwilling — to make a bucket. No one playing more than 10 minutes a game is making a positive statistical impact. And scarcely removed from his COVID-19 vaccination stance, Irving is boosting antisemitic movies and books.
Irving's now-deleted social media post, which comes amid an already-fraught moment of antisemitism in America, platformed the beliefs of an extremist sect of Black Hebrew Israelites — a sect unrelated to mainstream Judaism that believes they are the true descendants of the ancient Israelites and pushes antisemitic tropes against other Jewish people.
On Wednesday, after more than a week of heated discussion and criticism, the Nets, Irving and the Anti-Defamation League released a joint statement in which Irving apologized for boosting antisemitic propaganda.
"I oppose all forms of hatred and oppression and stand strong with communities that are marginalized and impacted every day," Irving said. "I am aware of the negative impact of my post towards the Jewish community and I take responsibility."
Irving went on to say that he does not believe that everything said in the documentary was true or reflects his morals or principles.
"So from my family and I, we meant no harm to any one group, race or relgion of people, and wish only to be a beacon of truth and light," Irving said.
The Nets and Irving also announced that they would each donate $500,000 toward "causes that work to eradicate hate and intolerance" and that Irving, the Nets and the affiliated New York Liberty WNBA team will work in partnership with the ADL.
It’s barely November – just weeks into the nascent NBA season – and the Nets' future already appears highly uncertain.
After his separation from the team was announced, Nash released his own statement, wishing the team the best in turning the season around.
“It was an amazing experience with many challenges that I'm incredibly grateful for,” Nash wrote in a statement.
Late on Tuesday, the Nets — now led by interim head coach Jacque Vaughn — had a competitive game with the Chicago Bulls... for three quarters. In the fourth, Bulls star Zach LaVine scored 20 of his 29 points, out-scoring the Nets (19 points total) by himself.
Vaughn may not have the gig for long. Shortly after Nash left the team, ESPN reported that Ime Udoka was being targeted as his potential replacement. Udoka was suspended by the Celtics, reportedly over an improper relationship with a member of the staff, sources told The Associated Press. In a press conference, Celtics owner Wyc Grousbeck said that the team wouldn’t prevent Udoka from being hired by another team.
After the game, Durant told reporters that he learned of Nash’s departure upon waking from an afternoon nap, and that he was “shocked” by the news. He told reporters that, no matter what happens, everyone’s got to come to work, and that he enjoyed coming to work with Nash.
When asked where things went wrong for Nash, Durant said that the Nets “didn’t have a healthy team, didn’t play well. That’s what happens in the league.”
The Nets are now 2-6 on the season. On Nov. 30, for its game against the Washington Wizards, the team will be celebrating its decade in Brooklyn with a giveaway for fans, and the unveiling of mosaic of fan-submitted photos.