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      Nets Owner Backs Team Leaders Amid Durant’s Reported Ultimatum

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      “Our front office and coaching staff have my support,” Joe Tsai said on Twitter just hours after a report that Kevin Durant wants the team to choose between keeping him or the coach and G.M.Joe Tsai, the owner of the Nets, issued a statement of support for the team’s front office and coaching staff on Twitter Monday evening and added, “We will make decisions in the best interest of the Brooklyn Nets.”Our front office and coaching staff have my support. We will make decisions in the best interest of the Brooklyn Nets.— Joe Tsai (@joetsai1999) August 8, 2022
      The tweet appeared to be in response to a report from The Athletic that said the team’s star forward, Kevin Durant, was still insistent that the Nets meet a trade demand he made in June. Durant, one of the N.B.A.’s best players, met with Tsai in person over the weekend, The Athletic reported, and conditioned his staying with the team on the removal of Coach Steve Nash and General Manager Sean Marks. (Durant previously had publicly lauded Nash, who just completed his second year as the Nets’ coach, saying in the spring that the coach had handled the Nets “perfectly.”)The Nets 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 weighed in on basketball matters publicly, and just one year ago Durant appeared to be happily married to the Nets, having agreed to a four-year contract extension with the team he had signed with in the summer of 2019.But much of Durant’s three seasons with the Nets haven’t gone according to plan and have been marked by tumult.Durant, while recovering from an Achilles’ tendon injury, signed with the franchise along with his friends, the star point guard Kyrie Irving and the veteran center DeAndre Jordan. During the 2020-21 season, the Nets traded many of their young players, along with several draft picks, to Houston for James Harden, seemingly assembling one of the most fearsome star groups in N.B.A. history.But injuries kept the three stars from seeing the court very often. They played only 16 games together and had a dominant record of 13-3. In the 2021 playoffs, the Nets lost in the second round to the Milwaukee Bucks, the eventual champions.Last season, the Nets were once again optimistic that they would live up to their lofty expectations. But Irving’s refusal to get vaccinated against Covid-19 meant that he couldn’t play in home games until later in the season because of a New York City rule that was eventually lifted. A frustrated Harden asked the Nets for a trade, and the Nets sent him to the division rival Philadelphia 76ers for Ben Simmons. And once again, Durant, as well as other players on the team, dealt with injuries, forcing Nash to push rookies into unexpected roles.Durant, left, requested a trade in June after having signed a four-year extension with the Nets in 2021.Brad Penner/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThe Nets hit rock bottom in the playoffs, where they were swept in the first round by the Boston Celtics, an embarrassing outcome for a team that looked to be — on paper — one of the most talented teams of the decade.Durant’s trade request was a bombshell that shocked many league observers. For one thing, the Nets were projected to enter training camp with a formidable roster that include Simmons, a three-time All-Star, and Irving, who opted into the final year of his contract. But a player of Durant’s caliber has almost never made a trade request like this with four years left on his contract.Durant’s trade value, despite his résumé, is uncertain, in part because of how rare his request is and also because of Durant himself. In three years with the Nets, he played 90 regular season games of a possible 236 because of injuries. He will be entering his 16th season, a stage by which most players are already in steep decline. But when Durant has played, he has mostly looked like he always has: a generational talent.Durant’s talent makes him a tantalizing risk for a team looking to put itself over the top, not the least of which is that when a team trades for him, he might not want to stay. More

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      ‘It Hurts’: Season Is Over Before Nets See How Good Big Three Can Be

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      Injuries kept the Nets from knowing what they could really look like once their stars — Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and James Harden — were playing well together.Whether Kevin Durant, James Harden and Kyrie Irving could collaborate, share the basketball and play good enough defense to bring a championship to New York’s less heralded N.B.A. franchise were unknowns that nagged at the entire league.Now, after being eliminated by the Milwaukee Bucks on Saturday night in Game 7 of their Eastern Conference semifinal series, the Nets cannot hush their skeptics until next year. After a 48-24 season and playoff ride that lasted only two rounds, the biggest questions about their three stars remain unanswered.Injuries overrode potential basketball issues and neutralized the Nets’ status among Las Vegas oddsmakers as title favorites. Durant, Harden and Irving shared the floor for only 43 seconds in the Bucks series. In Game 7, with only Durant as a dependable offensive option and Irving in street clothes, Milwaukee outlasted the Nets, 115-111, in overtime at Barclays Center, which inflicted a searing pain of its own.“It hurts,” Coach Steve Nash said, lauding the efforts of Durant, who scored 48 points in 53 minutes in Game 7, and Harden, who also played all 53 minutes, despite a hamstring strain. “I hurt for them more than anything.”The N.B.A.’s 75th season will be remembered for its Covid-19 protocols, game postponements and empty arenas for months. But the Nets became the league’s biggest on-court story after their acquisition in January of Harden from the Houston Rockets. Five years after General Manager Sean Marks was hired to rescue a franchise devoid of elite talent and draft picks, Marks built a legitimate contender by assembling one of the most impressive offensive threesomes in league history.The trouble for the Nets was not their defensive shortcomings, the depth they sacrificed to make the trade with the Rockets, the lack of available practice time during the coronavirus pandemic or Nash’s inexperience as a first-year coach. It was this: In the regular season, Durant, Harden and Irving were healthy enough to play together for only 202 minutes across eight games. Their 130 minutes together in a five-game dismissal of the Boston Celtics in the first round proved to be their only burst of continuity as a unit. Milwaukee won three of the final four games of the series after Irving’s nasty right ankle sprain in the first half of Game 4.These playoffs were supposed to be the Nets’ chance to shift a slice or two of cultural relevance to Brooklyn from Manhattan in a city teeming with Knicks fans. In the end, neither Marks nor Nash really came away knowing what the Nets could really look like when whole.Some key moments that brought the Nets to this point:Durant and Irving Sign OnEntering the 2019-20 season, there was much speculation about where Durant and Irving would end up. Earlier in the previous season, Irving had committed to staying with Boston long-term, while Durant seemed to be on his way to another title with Golden State. As the world found out after their seasons unraveled — Durant’s through an Achilles’ tear in the 2019 N.B.A. finals — they wanted to play together.The Nets had enough salary cap flexibility to sign them, as well as their friend DeAndre Jordan. The Knicks had the same wherewithal, but Durant and Irving chose the Nets and took Jordan, who finished the 2018-19 season with the Knicks, with them.Nets officials made the moves knowing Durant would probably miss his entire first season as a Net while recovering from the Achilles’ injury. Irving wound up playing only 20 games in his first season in Brooklyn because of shoulder problems. Both are now halfway through four-year deals.Nash’s HiringSteve Nash had a 48-24 record and was the Eastern Conference’s coach of the month in February in his first season as a Nets and N.B.A. coach.Elsa/Getty ImagesThe Nets shook the N.B.A. again by hiring Nash as coach in September 2020. He had no coaching experience, even at the assistant level, but he won two Most Valuable Player Awards and was one of the best point guards in league history.He was essentially chosen by Marks, his former Phoenix Suns teammate, who felt he had the gravitas and communication skills to manage the Nets’ two mercurial stars. Harden would not arrive until a few weeks into Nash’s first season on the bench. The Nets also brought in Mike D’Antoni, Nash’s former coach in Phoenix, to lend veteran guidance.“I wasn’t hired to come in and be a tactical wizard,” Nash said on a podcast hosted by the N.B.A. sharpshooter JJ Redick.Hiring Nash, who is white, nonetheless elicited criticism, given the dearth of Black coaches in the N.B.A., whose player pool is estimated to be nearly 80 percent Black. Nash’s hiring came after Jacque Vaughn, who completed the 2019-20 season as the team’s interim coach and had the Nets playing unexpectedly well without Durant and Irving in the N.B.A.’s so-called bubble in Florida. Vaughn, who is Black, stayed on as an assistant alongside D’Antoni and Ime Udoka. On ESPN, Stephen A. Smith called Nash’s hiring “white privilege.”“Well, I did skip the line, frankly,” Nash said at his introductory news conference. “But at the same time, I think leading an N.B.A. team for almost two decades is pretty unique.”The Harden BlockbusterHarden entered this season as a disgruntled member of the Rockets. He wanted out after D’Antoni and Daryl Morey left the team without an established coach and its top front-office executive, and Harden pushed for a trade to the Nets to reunite with Durant, his former Oklahoma City Thunder teammate. It was an audacious move for someone with three years left on his contract — and it cemented the Nets as league villains when it worked.Harden reported late to training camp to apply pressure on the Rockets to trade him. Appearing to be in less than optimal shape made his disinterest palpable during the eight regular-season games he played. The Nets, off to a 6-6 start, ignored Harden’s checkered playoff résumé and the rampant skepticism that one ball would not be enough to satisfy three high-volume scorers, and proceeded with trade talks.In January, the Nets acquired James Harden, pictured shooting over Giannis Antetokounmpo, but he strained a hamstring and missed more time than he had in any previous season.Wendell Cruz/USA Today Sports, via ReutersIn a four-team trade, Marks agreed to surrender control of the Nets’ top draft pick through 2027 to the Rockets and deal two young fan favorites, Caris LeVert (to Indiana) and Jarrett Allen (to Cleveland), to land Harden. As a bonus, the trade kept Harden from landing alongside center Joel Embiid in Philadelphia, after the 76ers offered the Rockets a deal involving Ben Simmons.The deal remains a gamble for the Nets. Every year without a championship will increase the scrutiny and pressure. Management must decide whether to pursue contract extensions with Durant, Harden and Irving that would cost hundreds of millions in salary and luxury tax or risk seeing any of the three opt for free agency after next season under their current contracts.“This is just the start of our journey,” Joe Tsai, the Nets’ owner, said on Twitter after the Game 7 loss. Known as one of the league’s wealthiest owners alongside the Los Angeles Clippers’ Steve Ballmer, Tsai certainly has the financial might to keep the core together.Irving’s AbsencesDuring the pursuit of Harden and after his arrival, Irving missed seven games in January for personal reasons. Marks said Irving’s sudden unavailability and the acquisition were “completely separate.” Yet the Nets felt it was urgent to maximize Durant’s championship window and made the trade with that in mind, according to two people familiar with the club’s thinking who were not authorized to discuss it publicly.Kyrie Irving, left, who was out since Game 4 with a right ankle sprain, supported his Nets teammates from the bench in Game 7 against the Bucks on Saturday night.Elsa/Getty ImagesThe Nets knew they wouldn’t have a training camp to try to assimilate Harden into the team, but figured that by bringing in a durable player, they would almost always have two elite players on the floor. It also became clear, soon after Harden’s arrival, that he was best suited to be the team’s playmaker, according to one of the people. Clear, even, to Irving.“We established that maybe four days ago now,” Irving said in February. “I just looked at him and I said, ‘You’re the point guard and I’m going to play shooting guard.’ That was as simple as that.”Cries that Harden was a luxury item for the Nets faded fast. The team went 29-8 in the regular season in games that Harden played and 12-11 without him.InjuriesHealth woes began almost immediately; Spencer Dinwiddie was lost to a season-ending knee tear just three games in. Dinwiddie averaged a career-high 20.6 points per game the season before, and he was expected to be yet another scoring threat on a team full of them.Durant overcame his Achilles’ tear in a big way, ending his season with 49 points against Milwaukee in Game 5 and 48 points in Game 7. But he wound up playing in only 35 of the Nets’ 72 regular-season games because of a hamstring injury. Harden, who was dealing with his own hamstring injury, missed more time in the regular season (21 of the final 23 games) and playoffs than he had in any previous season.The Nets were rocked in April when LaMarcus Aldridge, a former All-Star they had signed after he negotiated a buyout with the San Antonio Spurs, retired at age 35 because of a longstanding heart condition. Nash used a franchise-record 38 starting lineups in those 72 games and four separate ones in the Bucks series, leaning upon the well-traveled Jeff Green; Blake Griffin, a former All-Star who joined the team in April; and Griffin’s former Detroit Pistons teammate Bruce Brown.For the playoffs, the Nets finally seemed healthy — for one round. Harden missed all but the opening minute of the first four games of the Milwaukee series and lacked explosion or lift in his legs when he volunteered to return for Game 5 after Irving’s ankle sprain. Green’s plantar fascia strain kept him out of the first three games with the Bucks.“It’s been a really difficult year,” Nash said. “We’ve had a lot thrown at us.”Even with the injuries and Milwaukee’s stars healthy, the Nets came within an inch of advancing to the next round. With one second left in regulation in Game 7 and the Nets down by 2 points, Durant made a contested shot from the right wing that appeared to be a 3-pointer for the win. But his toe was on the 3-point line, and it counted as a long 2, sending the Nets to overtime instead of to the Eastern Conference finals.“My big ass foot stepped on the line,” Durant said. “I was just seeing a little screenshot how close I was to ending their season on that shot. But it wasn’t in God’s plan, and we move on.” More

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      Teammates in Brooklyn, Rivals in M.L.S.

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      When Kevin Durant bought a stake in the Philadelphia Union last summer, he became the fourth member of the Nets with an ownership stake in Major League Soccer.In the early days of Major League Soccer’s restart last summer, Jim Curtin, the coach of the Philadelphia Union, told his players that he had lined up a special guest for a video conference call.The Union players were in the league’s bubble at Walt Disney World, outside of Orlando, Fla., and because of health and safety protocols that limited large group gatherings, they had scattered to their hotel rooms for the call. A familiar figure soon appeared on their screens. Kevin Durant, one of the team’s new owners, had arrived to deliver a pep talk.As Durant’s speech — a message about what it takes to succeed and become a champion — morphed into a nothing-is-off-limits discussion, the players asked him about his N.B.A. title runs with Golden State, about his decision to join the Nets in free agency and about his then-ongoing rehabilitation from Achilles’ tendon surgery.“It hit with our players because they’ve all been injured at certain times — how lonely that can be, and getting yourself back to the top,” Curtin said. “The interesting thing is that I have guys from 15 different countries in my group, and all of them were like, ‘That was amazing.’ I think Kevin contributed to the team in a bigger way than he realized.”When Durant agreed to purchase a 10 percent stake in the Union last June — an investment worth more than $20 million — he joined a growing but select club of basketball stars who have acquired interests in professional soccer teams. LeBron James was ahead of the curve when, in 2011, he secured a small stake in the English club Liverpool.For a short spell, Carmelo Anthony owned Puerto Rico F.C. of the now-defunct North American Soccer League, and the W.N.B.A. star Candace Parker recently bought a piece of Angel City F.C., an expansion team in the National Women’s Soccer League.Durant isn’t even the only soccer owner in the Nets’ locker room. He gets daily reminders of the N.B.A.’s rapid cross-pollination with M.L.S.: Steve Nash, the Nets’ coach, is a co-owner of the Vancouver Whitecaps; Joe Tsai, the Nets’ owner, has a stake in Los Angeles F.C.; and James Harden, one of Durant’s teammates, arrived in Brooklyn this season with an ownership slice of the Houston Dynamo.“I’m sure once we play those guys, me and James will have a nice little wager on it,” Durant said in a telephone interview, adding: “It’s cool to see guys in our sport stepping over and doing something different.”The involvement of top basketball players in North American soccer comes at a time when athletes — particularly Black athletes — are increasingly leveraging their wealth and their public profiles to upend the traditional athlete-owner dynamic. Consider that the N.W.S.L.’s ownership ranks now include not only Parker but also Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka, tennis stars who understand their influence and are seizing opportunities to wield it beyond the court.Harden has a partial ownership stake in the Houston Dynamo of M.L.S. and the Dash of the N.W.S.L.Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times“I think players are realizing now that they have the opportunity to not just play for these teams and get paid by these owners,” Parker said. “They have the opportunity to actually write the checks. This generation has a different mind-set.”Parker said she became more serious about the idea of team ownership in recent years as a player for the Los Angeles Sparks. She got to know the owners, she said, and was intrigued by what happens behind the scenes — and the profound effect of those decisions.Durant said that he had thrown himself into the Union’s affairs. He participates in the ownership group’s weekly conference calls. He has chatted with the coaches about development and training. He has offered opinions on everything from jersey design to community outreach. He has conferred with the players about social justice issues, joining a call that helped lead to the team’s role in a voter-registration drive last year. And he has shown a willingness to opine on dubious refereeing decisions, like any other good Union fan.After the Union parted with two of their best players in the off-season — midfielder Brenden Aaronson now plays in Austria and defender Mark McKenzie left for Belgium — Durant may be the team’s most high-profile addition in the last year.Durant was not exactly a soccer aficionado growing up in Prince George’s County, Md., outside of Washington, D.C. Tall for his age and 6-foot-10 by high school, he spent most of his time working on his jump shot. But he would kick the soccer ball around with his friends, he said, and he quickly identified a parallel between the sports.“I swear one of the things he loves about it is that it’s reliant on scoring a bucket,” said Rich Kleiman, Durant’s manager and business partner.Early in his N.B.A. career, Durant took a couple of promotional trips to Europe on behalf of Nike, one of his sponsors, and met some of the company’s other global pitchmen. They happened to be soccer players. Durant’s exposure continued to grow when he joined the Warriors and developed a relationship with Nash, who was then working with the team as a player development consultant. Nash, who has been a co-owner of the Whitecaps since 2008, is an avid soccer player whose brother Martin once played for Canada’s national team.Nash has had a stake in the Vancouver Whitecaps since 2008. He trained with prospects for the team in 2009.Andy Clark/Reuters“Steve is huge into soccer,” Durant said. “We’ve talked about what it is to be an owner, and how much traveling he does to stay up with the team and how often he goes over there.”Durant recalled a formative experience in 2019, when he saw a news release announcing that Harden had joined the ownership group of the Dynamo and the Houston Dash of the N.W.S.L. “I got more and more interested when I saw some of my peers get into this,” Durant said.For athletes like Durant, Kleiman said, soccer franchises are “a realistic entry point” for team ownership. Current players are not allowed to acquire stakes in N.B.A. or W.N.B.A. teams, and the valuations of N.F.L. franchises and top European soccer clubs can reach into the billions, putting significant ownership stakes out of reach even for wealthy athletes. (There are exceptions, of course: James purchased a minor stake in the Boston Red Sox last month from the same partners who own Liverpool.)Parker said the driving force behind her involvement with Angel City F.C. was her 11-year-old daughter, Lailaa. Parker, a two-time winner of the W.N.B.A.’s Most Valuable Player Award, has long been vocal about encouraging others to support and invest in women’s sports.Candace Parker is a superstar in the W.N.B.A. and has become a top commentator on the N.B.A., but she says her first love was soccer. She recently purchased a piece of Angel City F.C., an expansion team in the National Women’s Soccer LeagueJonathan Daniel/Getty Images“And my daughter, she’s the main one who kind of calls me on all my stuff. She was the one who was like, ‘But Mom, are you doing it?’” Parker said. “So I kind of had her in my brain when I decided to go about this, because I think it’s so important for us to not just say it but do it as well.”Parker said soccer, not basketball, was her first love. She played until she was 13, she said. “Until my parents crushed my dreams because I was going to be tall and they told me that they didn’t ever see any 6-foot-2 soccer players,” she said. “I wanted to be Mia Hamm or Brandi Chastain.”Durant had talked with a different M.L.S. team, D.C. United, about investing in the team before those negotiations stalled. After The Athletic reported on those discussions in October 2019, Jay Sugarman, the Union’s majority owner, reached out.“Sort of fortuitous timing,” Sugarman said. “We were looking for different voices in our ownership group.”Two months later, Durant and Kleiman visited with team officials at the Union’s training facility. Curtin operated as a tour guide. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little star-struck,” he said.“You could tell right away with Rich and with Kevin that they were serious,” Jim Curtin, the coach of the Philadelphia Union, said of Rich Kleiman and Durant. Kathy Willens/Associated PressAny preconceived ideas that Curtin had about Durant’s potential role — that he only wanted to attach his celebrity to the team without having any actual involvement — dissolved as they went around the building. Durant had questions.“You could tell right away with Rich and with Kevin that they were serious,” Curtin said.Sugarman said he sensed that Durant and Curtin were philosophically aligned. In the weight room, Curtin talked about how “beach muscles” are out and core strength is in. In the cafeteria, he introduced Durant to the team chef and emphasized the importance of diet to recovery. In the film room, Curtin mentioned how he liked to keep those sessions as tight as possible, otherwise he risked losing the players’ attention.“I feel the same way,” Durant replied.Curtin also explained how he avoided the locker room because he considered it the players’ “sacred space,” and how the team prioritized its youth academy and innovation. Philadelphia has experimented with GPS trackers, he told Durant. The team flies drones at training sessions. It digs into analytics.“He was interested,” Curtin said. “Not only interested in the game of soccer but also interested in what we do on the field and how we get our players ready.”By last June, the deal was official. Durant’s ownership stake includes a marketing partnership with Thirty Five Ventures, the sports, media and entertainment company that he co-founded with Kleiman. But it also has given him a championship goal in another sport.The Union finished with the best record in M.L.S. in last year’s shortened season but were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs. They, and Durant, want a better ending this year.“We just want to keep building,” Durant said. “It’s a lot of work to be done.” More