The Nets owner, Joe Tsai, tweeted Monday night a statement of support for the team’s front office and coaching staff, adding, “We will make decisions in the best interests of the Brooklyn Nets.”
The tweet appeared to be in response to a report by The Athletic that said the team’s star forward Kevin Durant was still insisting the Nets meet a trade demand he made in June. Durant, one of the best players in the NBA, met with Tsai in person over the weekend. The athletics reported, and conditional on his remaining with the team following the removal of coach Steve Nash and general manager Sean Marks. (Durant had previously publicly praised Nash, who had just completed his sophomore year as Nets coach, saying in the spring that the coach “handled the Nets perfectly.”)
The networks did not respond to a request for comment, and a spokesman for Durant’s company, Boardroom, declined to comment.
Tsai’s Twitter post was an unusual escalation of a simmering feud between Durant, 33, and the Nets. Tsai has rarely spoken publicly on basketball matters, and just a year ago Durant appeared happily married to the Nets after agreeing to a four-year contract extension with the team he signed with in the summer of 2019.
But much of Durant’s three seasons with the Nets didn’t go according to plan and was marked by tumult.
Durant signed with the franchise while recovering from an Achilles tendon injury along with his friends, star point guard Kyrie Irving and veteran center DeAndre Jordan. During the 2020-21 season, the Nets traded many of their young players to Houston along with several draft picks for James Harden, seemingly assembling one of the most fearsome star groups in NBA history.
However, injuries kept the three stars from seeing the court very often. They only played 16 games together and had one dominant record of 13-3. In the 2021 playoffs, the Nets lost in the second round to the eventual champions, the Milwaukee Bucks.
Last season, the Nets were optimistic that they would meet their high expectations. But Irving’s refusal to get vaccinated against Covid-19 meant he could only attend home games later in the season due to a New York rule that was eventually repealed. A frustrated Harden asked the Nets for a trade, and the Nets sent him to division rivals Philadelphia 76ers for Ben Simmons. And once again, Durant and other players on the team struggled with injuries, forcing Nash to push rookies into unexpected roles.
The Nets hit rock bottom in the playoffs, where they were defeated by the Boston Celtics in the first round, an embarrassing result for a team that – on paper – appeared to be one of the most talented teams of the decade.
Durant’s trade request was a bombshell that shocked many League watchers. For one, the Nets should go into camp with an impressive roster that includes Simmons, a three-time All-Star, and Irving, who is in the final year of his contract. But a player of Durant’s caliber has almost never made such a swap request despite having four years left on his contract.
Despite his resume, Durant’s commercial value is uncertain, partly because of the rarity of his request and also because of Durant himself. In three years with the Nets, he played 90 regular-season games out of a possible 236 due to injuries. He will enter his 16th season, a phase where most players are already in severe decline. But when Durant played, he mostly looked the same as always: a generational talent.
Durant’s talent makes him an enticing risk for a team looking to go ahead, not least when a team trades for him he may not want to stay.