Things Are A Little Bit Different For Sean Marks and the Brooklyn Nets These Days
The Brooklyn Nets were undercover darlings of NBA culture by the end of last season. With no relevant draft picks and only a couple of players with any real trade value when Sean Marks took over as GM, the Nets somehow managed to go from rock bottom to the playoffs within four years and they did it through all the things that the basketball zeitgeist loves to see: clever trade leverages, a modernised style of play, the excellent coaching of Kenny Atkinson amidst a focus on player development, and most of all a really positive team environment which allowed guys to thrive.
Then they went and signed Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving.
Those two fellas aren’t exactly in that same darling status, KD because of his eternally controversial decision to join the Golden State Warriors when he did and Kyrie because of the way things ended for him at both the Cavs and Celtics. It doesn’t help that neither is averse to a bit of intersquad drama either. KD’s relationship with Draymond Green was an ongoing concern for the Dubs in that final season while Kyrie Irving... yeah safe to say he doesn’t have a lot of friends left in Boston. That one sure did get ugly.
We’re now at the halfway point of the first season of KD & Kyrie in Brooklyn and the dissonance between that superstar power which has been welcomed into this franchise and the pre-existing team-first and player-friendly atmosphere which took the Nets to the level where they were a viable option for the top players in free agency in the first place is every bit as intriguing as we thought it would be. Obviously they needed the elite talent in order to take the team to the next level but would those guys then corrupt what came before them? After all it’s a different story once the big dogs stroll into town. Expectations change drastically. Durant and Irving have both experienced what it takes to win a championship. They have their own routines and ideas, they know how it’s done and will be more sceptical than the underdogs that Marks/Atkinson had previously procured.
Kenny Atkinson: “Our whole setup can be a bit rigid. We're like a college program, in some ways. We have this car wash of very specific things with very specific people. But I can already see it morphing into something it was not before. When Joe Harris was trying to make it in the league, he was saying, 'I'll do whatever you want.' Now we're dealing with veterans who are saying, 'OK, this is how you do it. But this is how I've always done it, and this has worked for me.' The challenge is, can we meld the two? No one gave us an award for mastering the culture code. We're still learning.”
Learning. Evolving. Figuring it out. The silver lining to the injury cloud of Kevin Durant is that it does pretty much mean that the Nets have an entire year to calibrate the next phase of Brooklyn basketball before it all goes into hyperspeed when Durant is ready to get back on the court for 2020-21. But that doesn’t mean it’ll be a pressure-free process. Already there’ve been a few too many Kyrie Irving related headlines for anyone’s liking. Here’s what Sean Marks had to say at the start of the journey...
Sean Marks: “I think everything has to change slightly. We haven't had that type of talent. Things are going to change, things are going to adapt, they have to. They have to start driving the culture. We have to learn from them. These guys are elite-level players. We have to see what we can learn from them.”
That’s... a fair bit of compromise to be honest. Especially when you add in the compromise of signing DeAndre Jordan as part of what was effectively a package deal with KD and Kyrie. Jordan joining the Nets on a multi-year deal on half-decent coin despite them already having Jarrett Allen, who they’d drafted and developed themselves, who at this point is a better player than Jordan in the same position. Clearly the Nets organisation was willing to meet in the middle here so the question became what about their big name acquisitions, would they do the same?
Kyrie Irving has sparked up controversy a couple times this season. His desperation to be the main man on his Nets debut saw him score a thrilling 50 points but he missed a potential game-winner as the Nets fell to the Timberwolves. Kyrie took 33 shots that day, more than the second and third scorers on his team combined. Maybe not the best look for a guy who has a reputation as being a bit selfish but also he was one shot away from being the hero and nobody should have expected this team to gel from day one anyway. Things continued on a slippery tangent from there thanks largely to a 4-7 start from Brookie before Irving got injured and would miss the next 26 games with a shoulder injury.
As soon as he was out the Nets went on a 12-6 run, looking more like the team that got the sixth seed last season... although just as some silly people out there were starting to argue that this was a better team without Irving, it all caught up with them and they lost seven straight in a streak only broken the game before Irving returned. Kyrie then shot 10/11 for a very efficient 21 points in 20 minutes in a big win over Atlanta in his comeback however he was awful two games later against Philly, scoring 14 points from 21 shots and logging a -29 while on the court (in an 11-point loss, he was the only Nets player worse than -10). It was immediately after that game that he came out with some comments about how the team that had been battling hard without him for the last month and a half just wasn’t good enough.
It’s a bad look. It really is, particularly after he was the worst player on the court in that game. Typically Kyrie got slandered all over town after that one, yet it’s worth mentioning that he then went out of his way to clarify what he meant both to his coach and to his teammates. Naturally his repentance didn’t get 1% of the focus that his initial comments got though and that’s the thing with Kyrie Irving: he’s not great at media work and he’s burnt a lot of bridges in the past.
Specifically in Boston. He was just a terrible fit in that locker room for whatever reason and with the extensive influence of Boston Sports Fans in the media that is going to be a tough reputation to shake. It’s made worse that he’s a bit of an iconoclast as well, both on the court and off it. Especially off it, where his instagram posts tend to read like one part mindfulness guru, one part defiant athlete, and one part cult leader. Old mate’s all about his third eye and the light of the soul and all that. Which, sweet as, it’s a noble pursuit... only problem is that he paints himself as an enigma and a lot of media folk simply don’t know how to deal with him.
Take the flat earther thing for example. I took that initially as more of a metaphor about living with a healthy dose of scepticism (albeit with a terrible example) but Kyrie being Kyrie he then committed to the joke way too deep and he’ll probably never live that down now. Even just the other day he mentioned Martin Luther King Jr’s name in a rant about how people overreact and misinterpret things and apparently that meant he was comparing himself to MLK... look, Kyrie might have a pretty substantial ego housed in that noggin’ of his but clearly he wasn’t trying to suggest he’s on that same scale, it’s pretty obvious people are just looking to connect the dots with this guy to fit their own existing ideas of him.
It’s such a weird situation however you’ve gotta remember that the Kyrie Irving that speaks in those forced media environments, backed up against a wall or by his locker with dozens of microphones in his face, is not necessarily reflective of what he’s like when it’s only him and his teammates. His ex-buddies in Boston never really had much negative to say about him publically (well, apart from Marcus Morris naturally), it was the territory of the Boston media/fans to savage him in that way. Those media opps are an artificial stageshow. Some players are really open and honest in that position, others are completely guarded.
And then there’s Kyrie, who is both guarded but spontaneous and that’s led to way too many slips of the tongue... although none of this is new so it ain’t like the Nets didn’t know what they were getting into. They’ve been extra careful with him since he signed. They kept him nice and protected while he was out injured even despite the murkiness of the injury itself (we never really had a timeframe or an idea of the significance of the injury) as they gave him room to recover in his own way. Some might even suggest they’ve been too lenient with him, although again we don’t know what conversations are happening behind closed doors. Sean Marks is absolutely one to keep those things in-house. He’s a Spurs guy after all.
Funnily enough, the person who seems to have the best handle on Kyrie Irving is Kevin Durant. There was a piece on ESPN a few months back which went into this transition for the Nets, written by the esteemed Jackie MacMullan (although even the best in the business have their biases and Jackie Mac happens to be a Bostonite who covered Kyrie’s fallout with the Celtics up close). In it was a note about “Irving’s famous mood swings” which got people talking negatively about the fella once more. Unfairly too, hinting at his apparent uncommunicative funks from only an outside perspective (and with off the record sources) felt pretty irresponsible and possibly even a little vindictive too – although if the latter is true then Kyrie deserves some blame too because it’s stemmed from his poor handling of the media in the past. This is what KD had to say about all that though, a pretty brilliant response to a slightly contrived drama...
Kevin Durant: “I look at Kyrie as somebody who is an artist. You have to leave him alone. You know what he'll bring to the table every night because he cares so much about the game. Now, it might not be how other people want him to care about it. He has his way of doing things. I respect who he is and what he does. He has all the intangibles you want in a teammate and a great player. So, how he gets to the point to be ready for 7:30 every night, I'm supporting him 100 percent.”
Supportive, respectful, and highlighting the common goals rather than the conflicts. Durant is extremely unlikely to play this season which has made him a somewhat ghostly presence for this team. As they go through the trenches trying to figure it out, he’s like the redeeming angel coming to save them down the line. Everything is different with Kevin Durant on the court. And while Irving mostly wanted to move back home to Brooklyn and play with guys like Durant and DeAndre Jordan, Kevin Durant’s decision was way more complicated than that. He apparently spent hours researching Sean Marks, from his playing history to his coaching and management career. He spoke in depth with Jared Dudley about what to expect from a playing point of view there. And according to Marksy it was the Nets’ system that ultimately sold him: the attitude of the players, the style of play, the whole package.
That, basically, is exactly what the Nets are trying to achieve. Full buy in from one of the best in the business, a true evolution in their franchise rather than a revolution. For what it’s worth there’s been no dramas with Kyrie Irving’s work ethic and Marks is on record as saying he works “religiously” in the gym, but even if you’re still suspicious then you know at least that the Kyrie Whisperer Mr Kevin Durant is on the case.
We’ve gotta remember that this is a massive shift for all involved and if they’re gonna meet in the middle then it’s gonna take some time to get there. That goes for Kyrie too, who seemed to forget that the biggest piece of all is still in the physio room. This season is just preparation. Judge them next season when Durant is back, that’s when the true potential of this team needs to start flowering, and everything else has to be viewed in that context. In the meantime, I dunno, grab the popcorn and chill coz the speedbumps only prove that they’re moving forwards.
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