For the past three seasons, success for the Nets had been rooted in hypotheticals.
Ever since Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant joined the team in the summer of 2019, the Nets had been supremely talented on paper, with hopes of multiple N.B.A. championships. On the court, though, they were never good enough to contend. Their specialty, it seemed, was not playoff wins but off-court theater.
Two weeks into a new season, one that was supposed to be a fresh start, the Nets are once again mired in drama. Last week, Irving posted a link to an antisemitic documentary on his Twitter account, drawing a public rebuke from the team owner Joe Tsai. On Tuesday, the Nets announced that their coach, Steve Nash, was out. Hours later, General Manager Sean Marks sat down behind a microphone and tried to quiet the gathering storms.
Marks expressed regret about firing Nash, but said that now that it was done, he would “like to get back to basketball,” to “focus on the things that are important.” Asked why fans would continue to cheer for the Nets with the team’s constant dysfunction, Marks replied, “Look, it’s understandable” if they don’t. He said the Nets had a “window” for winning, one he hoped the next coach would maximize with the current roster. But that may take longer than he likes: An hour or so after he finished his news conference, the Nets took the court and lost again, falling to the Chicago Bulls, 108-99.
Marks’s problem, the Nets’ problem, is that there is no real proof that this team or that any of the other teams assembled during Irving and Durant’s tenure were built to win a championship. Since 2019, the deepest the Nets have advanced in the playoffs was the Eastern Conference semifinals two years ago. Durant carried the offensive load largely by himself in that series, with Irving and James Harden, now with the Sixers, mostly sidelined with injuries. If Durant had worn a smaller shoe — one that kept his toe behind the 3-point line on a critical shot — the Game 7 overtime loss that ended the Nets’ season that year might have been a win.
