Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving address wild offseason at Nets' media day
Kevin Durant #7 of the Brooklyn Nets fields questions from reports during Nets Media Day at the Brooklyn Nets HSS Training Center on Monday, Sept. 26, 2022. Credit: James Escher
The once-vaunted Nets culture, one of the focal points when they transitioned to Brooklyn a decade ago, crumbled thoroughly last season.
It was a failure that led to Kevin Durant’s since-rescinded trade request, he said Monday. It also had front-office personnel and players publicly recommitting to fixing internal fissures that doomed the superstar-laden group well before the Nets were swept by the Celtics in the first round of the 2022 playoffs.
Durant and Kyrie Irving highlighted an action-packed media day in which Durant underlined the frustrations that led him to tell owner Joe Tsai to make a choice: either him or the front-office tandem of general manager Sean Marks and coach Steve Nash, who he believed led the team in the wrong direction. And though all three were present on Monday, it became immediately clear that the détente was hard-fought.
Marks characterized the summer as a time of reckoning and self-reflection. Durant said he has confidence that the Nets are headed in the right direction after what he called a year of growth.
“I want everybody to be held accountable for their habits as a basketball player every day, and I think a lot of stuff was getting swept under the rug because we’re injured or these guys aren’t around,” Durant said, pointing to the 10 games they lost when he was nursing a knee injury in January. “And I’m like, we shouldn’t be losing some of these games that we lost regardless of who’s on the floor. So I was more so worried about how we’re approaching every day as a basketball team.”
Durant, who is signed through the 2025-26 season, acknowledged it isn’t easy to move a player of his caliber; the Nets were correctly looking for a hefty return package. He added that he is “committed to moving forward with the team.”
Irving, after missing most of last season because of his unvaccinated status, said he was close to opting out of the final year of his contract before changing course.
“It’s awkward, very awkward,” he said of the summer, which had him opting in shortly before Durant asked to be traded. “I’m sitting at home, like, I don’t know what to think . . . I just ultimately want to see him do well and be happy. If that wasn’t within our organization, I was gonna have to accept that and move on. And I knew that I could move on and get to a place where I knew Kev could be comfortable and everybody could be comfortable . . . It was kind of like a cluster-[expletive].”
Marks said he holds no ill will toward Durant and understands his frustration — what’s more, he shared it, and was committed to addressing the deficiencies laid bare by a “discombobulated” season.. The Nets were beset by injuries, and Irving’s vaccination status had the team in a constant state of upheaval. Additionally, they were dealing with a disgruntled James Harden, who eventually was traded to Philadelphia for Ben Simmons (Simmons said he’s fully cleared for activity after back surgery in May).
“It’s [better] to say, all right, if that’s the way he feels, what’s going on here?” Marks said. “What do we need to change? . . . I totally understand his frustration. I don’t know if there was anybody more frustrated than the two of us [he and Nash]. We’re all in on this. We all know what’s at stake here, what our ultimate goal is.”
The Nets lost sight of that at times last season, and it nearly cost them one of the best players in the game.
“I feel like we don’t have any respect out there on the court, and that’s what I want for us,” Durant said. “Respect amongst the NBA community as a team on how we play on both ends of the floor, from the GM all the way down to the equipment manager. I want that respect and I think you do that by how you work every single day, and we skipped some steps in how we work throughout that year last year because of the circumstances . . . I’m not preaching something I don’t practice. I come in here, every rep matters to me, so I want everybody to feel the same way.”
Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.
