The Brooklyn Nets had been eradicated Monday evening in unhappy and miserable style. Swept at house with a lot of the group cheering for the Celtics. Swept at house after Kevin Durant missed a pivotal free throw. Swept at house with Kyrie Irving being outplayed by Marcus Smart. Swept at house after shrinking on this sequence like psychological midgets.
There had been many symbols of the catastrophe that unfolded for the Nets this season, too many to element on this column house. All of them are unnerving to anyone with a stake in the way forward for this franchise. But none really feel extra ominous than the absence of Ben Simmons.
He was nowhere in sight on the Nets bench, not even to cheer on his teammates whereas carrying his customary DNP Elton John outfits. We got a brand new cause Simmons wasn’t enjoying in Monday’s 116-112 defeat, an absence that ensured he missed this whole season. Simmons is outwardly coping with a psychological concern, or, as coach Steve Nash vaguely referenced, “there’s a mental component to everything.”
We knew there would possibly’ve been an issue with Simmons’ head house after his fallout in Philadelphia. It’s the premise for submitting a grievance to recoup almost $20 million in wage from the Sixers. Okay, superb. Except, three issues: 1) GM Sean Marks ought to’ve thought-about this concern, together with Simmons’ propensity for again ache, earlier than they traded for a participant with three years left on a max contract, 2) Why ought to there be an expectation, following a whole yr of being unable to play by way of this “mental component,” that Simmons will ever return to courtroom, not to mention on the identical All-Star stage of a pair seasons in the past, and three) the Nets and Steve Nash aren’t reliable. They’ve misplaced all credibility this season, and that’s not meant to be insensitive to no matter Simmons goes by way of. It’s meant to name out the Nets for his or her lies and deceptive.
Take what they are saying with a grain of salt. That consists of after Monday evening’s loss, when Nash claimed {that a} crew with title aspirations carried out appropriately given the off-the-court drama. Nash’s bar was apparently lowered to the ground.
“When you add it up, it’s hard to say we underperformed,” Nash stated.
Remember when Nash claimed the whole lot was nice with James Harden and he wasn’t going to be traded? About every week later, Harden was traded. Remember when Sean Marks and Joe Tsai hopped on their elevated horses and declared Kyrie Irving wouldn’t be accepted as a part-time participant? You know the remaining.
Irving’s resolution to forgo the vaccine was all the time going to be judged by how the crew carried out within the playoffs, and Monday it was used as a cause for getting swept.
“It’s just really heavy emotionally this season. We all felt it,” Irving stated. “I felt like I was really letting the team down when I couldn’t play. It became a distraction.”
Nash has fallen below heavy scrutiny, and rightfully so based mostly on his underwhelming playoff sequence. But the issues go a lot deeper than the coach.
GM Sean Marks did a superb job constructing the inspiration of a younger crew a few years in the past, driving the wave of Kenny Atkinson’s participant growth. And after Irving and Durant conspired to signal with Brooklyn in 2019, Marks nonetheless had strong younger gamers and future first-round picks to flesh out a champion.
Except Marks bungled it.
The supporting forged round Durant and Irving is in some way worse than it was three years in the past. Most of that’s concerning the Simmons catastrophe, or the James Harden catastrophe — relying on the way you’d prefer to assign blame.
Either manner, the end result was a first-round sweep, a yr wasted and a lacking Ben Simmons.
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Source: www.bostonherald.com