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The Brooklyn Nets are currently in the midst of a full-scale rebuild, having used five (!) first round selections in the recent NBA Draft. It's a far cry from where the Nets were a few years ago when Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving were on their roster and the team was thought to be a legitimate championship contender.
At one point in their Nets tenure, Irving and Durant (and then-costar James Harden) were coached by NBA Hall of Fame point guard Steve Nash.
Durant and Nash recently discussed that period on LeBron James' “Mind The Game” podcast, with Durant stating that I think we didn’t get the full Steve Nash like I wanted… like you probably wanted. I just felt like it was just too many distractions in the way and you know, you can’t win that way.”
Now, Irving is teasing that he will also weigh in on the discussion.
“lol I am gonna address this on my stream soon,” wrote Irving on X, formerly Twitter.
Nash had no prior head coaching experience before the Nets brought him on to coach their burgeoning superteam of Durant, Irving, and Harden.
We will never know how far that taem would have gone had Irving and Harden not been hampered by injuries during the Nets 2021 playoff run. The Nets ended up being eliminated by the eventual champion Milwaukee Bucks in seven games despite a Herculean effort from Durant in that series, and the franchise has not won a playoff game in the four years since.
“I feel like we were locked in on the same page and understand like well we're trying to do something special here,” Durant told Nash during their podcast apperance. “But I felt like your hands were tied a lot because you had to — as a coach you got to deal with so much.”
Whatever the reason for the failure was, the Durant-Irving-Nash era Nets will likely be remembered as an NBA cautionary tale.
