If there is a lesson from the short and unfulfilling coaching tenure of Brooklyn Nets head coach Steve Nash, it’s perhaps that experience does matter. That was the question from the onset of Nash's tenure with the team, a former player of the year point guard with basically no NBA coaching experience taking on one of the League’s premier positions, laden with all-star talent and championship ambitions.
But for Nash and his team, things have bottomed out. It didn’t start that way, even as they lost in the second round of the playoffs in his first season. But in year two, the Nets started their current nosedive, underperforming consistently while also airing more dirty laundry than an episode of the Kardashians. That season also brought a trade of disgruntled superstar James Harden to Philadelphia in exchange for Ben Simmons, one of the most underperforming athletes in basketball history not named Greg Oden. Add that to a completely unhinged Kyrie Irving who only occasionally checks in with reality, and you’re one Kevin Durant away from the G-League. And now, Irving complicated this season with tweeting anti-Semitic garbage, following up on last year’s anti-vax craziness. That has left Steve Nash with a team that makes the Knicks franchise look like the Navy Seals in comparison. So now after a dismal two and five start to this season and a series of upcoming team meetings with the Anti-Defamation League, the Nets front office has decided that perhaps in fact experience would have been helpful and allowed Steve Nash to return to civilian life.
There is a lot of “I told you” so going around, which tends to happen around the end of any lackluster coaching job. There could be even more mustard on the critique here, given the high-profile nature of the job and, quite honestly, because some suggested that he jumped the HR line because he’s white. I won’t inherently buy that narrative, although I can’t say thriving in the role. So whether he got a leg up at the starting line, I think it’s safe to say it’s not going well.
Of course, the position of head coach in the NBA is far less predictable than one might assume. I suggest it’s 50% psychologist and probably a quarter mind reader. The rest is some combination of x’s & o’s and TV appearances. Great head coaches in the NBA are far less brilliant court strategists and far more Jedi mind readers. When it comes to a mercurial James Harden and an absolutely bananas Kyrie Irving, the force is particularly strong in both. It seems Steve Nash brough a clipboard to a light saber fight.
The Nets already seem to have chosen a successor, the currently suspended head basketball coach of the Boston Celtics Ime Udoka. This is a little awkward given that Udoka was suspended for both harassment and having an inappropriate relationship with a female employee. But I suppose in the landscape of the Brooklyn Nets, this is just another imperfect piece of a highly dysfunctional puzzle. If this hire goes through, this team will have more mandatory training sessions that Michael Scott in The Office.
There’s a lot to unpack here, and more than a few opportunities to critique of how the Brooklyn Nets run their team. Some have suggested that firing Steve Nash while keeping Kyrie Irving shows just how little they care about things other than winning. I’d suggest two things can be true at the same time: Steve Nash wasn’t a great coach, and Kyrie Irving should be out of the League. I think it’s also clear how little authority coaches often have with highly dysfunctional player talents – especially young coaches. And none are more dysfunctional than the Nets. Perhaps if we’ve learned one thing in the age of super teams, it’s that teams aren’t always equal to the sum of its parts. Which is why some uber teams have thrived, like Golden State, while others crumble under their own hubris. And if you want an example from the West Coast, just look at the Lakers, who have one win so far this year in six games.
For Steve Nash, this is probably as much relief as anything. Right now the Nets feel a bit like Van Halen right before firing David Lee Roth and heading into the Sammy Hagar years. So as they say, he might as well jump. And at the very least, now he has coaching experience.
Keith Strudler is the director of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. You can follow him on twitter at @KeithStrudler
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