The Brooklyn Nets started this season as many pundit favorites to reach the NBA Finals from the Eastern Conference. Instead, they were swept by the Boston Celtics in the first round of the playoffs. Now all that remains is to find out what went wrong in Brooklyn.
The trade with James Harden
The Nets started this season with the Big Three: a theoretically healthy Kevin Durant, a theoretically on-court Kyrie Irving, and a one-time NBA MVP in James Harden, who was acquired in a trade with the Houston Rockets last January. Bringing these talented veterans together was a risky move as they had all fallen out with their previous franchises.
To no one’s surprise, the trio didn’t last long and it was Harden who left. Limited in their ability to land a potential Impact All-Star in a Harden deal, they arranged an unhappy trade with the Philadelphia 76ers that brought back the enormously gifted first-line big man Ben Simmons.
The Nets’ gamble was based on the idea that Simmons was only holding out because his relationship with the Sixers was fractured following his infamous offensive collapse in last year’s playoffs. It turned out to be more than that: Simmons’ absence was due to both physical and mental issues that ultimately prevented him from playing a single minute in Brooklyn that season.
Yes, in the long run, the Nets could have something in the Simmons acquisition. That being said, the pressure to close the Harden deal and come to terms with this particular return hurt Brooklyn’s chances of success this year.
Kyrie Irving
The main reason Harden was fed up with his situation in Brooklyn? Well, it couldn’t help that he was dealing with the never-ending circus that was Irving’s struggle with the city of New York. It turns out that New York’s Covid-19 restrictions meant that unvaccinated players couldn’t play home games at Barclays Center, making it impossible for Irving to play much of the regular season in Brooklyn. Irving was a spectator at many crucial games.
Kyrie Irving: “I feel like I let the team down when I couldn’t play…It was a distraction at times.”
— Matt Brooks (@MattBrooksNBA) April 26, 2022
Many other players, contrary to their personal beliefs, would have simply gotten the vaccine, especially if it had hurt their team’s chances of winning a championship. After all, a dedicated Irving is one of the most prolific goalscorers in the league.
Irving, for his own reasons, refused to make such a sacrifice for his teammates. If you’re wondering if this could have been why Harden eventually forced his way out of town, well, that’s the conventional wisdom, although there has never been any documentary confirmation from Harden himself. One man who believes the issue has affected the season is Kyrie Irving. “I think [my vaccine status] was a distraction at times,” said the point guard after Monday’s loss to the Celtics. “And as you can see, we’ve just had some drastic changes.”
Kevin Durant was injured
So the Nets were many games without Irving, Harden was in Philadelphia and Simmons was on the bench. It was entirely up to Durant to shoulder a large portion of the team’s burden. Unfortunately, Durant suffered an MCL injury on Jan. 15 and was out for over a month and a half (KD wasn’t the only Nets player to miss, Joe Harris’ season was ruined by an ankle injury).
When Durant returned, he was pushed into duty to drag the Nets to a seventh-place finish that required them to win a play-in game just to make the playoffs. As the playoffs began, Durant felt the effects of the difficult minutes he played towards the end of the regular season.
That’s not a full excuse for his early struggles against Boston – especially since the Celtics were missing Robert Williams for the first two games of the series – but it couldn’t have helped. He managed 39 points, nine assists and seven rebounds in Game 4, but he was empty at that point.
Steve Nash Sunday spoke about fatigue and in particular Kevin Durant’s workload since returning.
I’ve been wondering about the NBA leaders in minutes played over the last month (regular season/play-in/playoff).
Imagine that.
(Durant has played 40+ minutes in 9 of his last 10.) pic.twitter.com/281qCP3xeo
— Sean Grande (@SeanGrandePBP) April 25, 2022
Steve Nash
Steve Nash has sometimes seemed overwhelmed as a coach this season. Photo: Brad Penner/USA Today SportsThe Nets have a habit of hiring mascots rather than head coaches: let’s not forget they only brought in Jason Kidd the season after he retired as a player. So it wasn’t shocking that they handed Hall of Famer Steve Nash the keys to the team in September 2020, even though he had never been an NBA assistant coach before.
Nets players supported Nash Monday night after the season ended, but at times during that round Nash looked more like a babysitter than a coach. With his team down 2-0 and a crucial Game 3, Nash seemed allergic to timeouts and designing plays, hoping his veterans would stumble into proper course of action of their own accord. They mostly didn’t.
After Nash’s hiring, Irving famously responded to the news with a lighthearted, “I don’t really see that we have a ‘head’ coach.” Perhaps not the most polite statement in the world, but Nash has done little to make his point this postseason Guard to prove otherwise.
The Boston Celtics
Still, it’s hard to say what Nash could have done given how thoroughly the Celtics overplayed his team. While Brooklyn’s dysfunction has made headlines, Boston should have been favored from the start.
After the team stumbled through the first half of the season, with first-time head coach Ime Udoka still learning on the job after an impressive internship under Gregg Popovich at the San Antonio Spurs and Nash himself at the Nets, the team recovered, Udoka came to own it and the Celtics have finally found their identity.
Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown learned to play together again. Marcus Smart was named NBA Defensive Player of the Year after being promoted to the starting point guard position … and the rest of his team wasn’t far behind. The Celtics were the best defensive team in the league in the second half of the regular season, and they showed no weaknesses on offense either. Faced with a chance to tank in the last game of the season and not face Durant and Irving in the first round of the playoffs, the Celtics played at full strength against a Memphis Grizzlies B-roster to secure second place in the East.
They accepted the challenge because they knew they could beat the nets on their own terms. By betting on themselves, the Celtics not only avenged their loss to the Nets in last year’s playoffs, but potentially sent Brooklyn’s entire organization back to the drawing board.