Kevin Durant and Steve Nash haven’t been Nets for some time now — but the intrigue around their collective tenure may never go away.
Kevin Durant and Steve Nash. What do those names mean to you now, in the big 2025?
I’m sure the majority of Brooklyn Nets fans would like to puff up their chests, stand up straight, and say “nothing.” Each guy has been off the team for more than two years now. Their collective tenure has been marked as a failure. The required time and reasons to move on are both there.
That said, dismissing the notion that others haven’t or can’t move on feels rather callous. For the younger Nets fans, those two helped provide the best basketball they’ve ever seen and got them closer to a championship than they’ve been in their lifetimes.
With how it’s looking right now, it might be the closest they get in some time.
Regardless, Nash and Durant did some talking this week on LeBron James’ podcast Mind the Game. Nash co-hosts the pod with King James, but Durant stepped in as a guest.
And whether he and Nash’s words hit you like salt in a seeping wound — or rubber pellets bouncing off a brick wall — quite a bit was unloaded.
But a lot was missed as well.
Once reaching the Brooklyn-centric part of the pod episode, around the 38th minute, James made a quick dig at Durant’s infamous “toe on the line” shot. About as unoriginal as it gets, LeBron, but a stinger nonetheless.
Not long after, Nash asked Durant what comes to mind when he thinks of their time in Brooklyn. From that point, we were off and running.
“We had this conversation in Portland, I think, right before a game, and I’m like, ‘Who am I spending my next five years with?’ I just signed that deal. You had just signed a deal. I feel like we were secure, but everything else around us was going to shit,” Durant said.
“Not in a bad way, we got GMs going to other teams. We got coaches going to other teams. We got players forcing trades. We got to bring in Ben Simmons — his back hurt. Like, it was just so much bullshit around us. I feel like we were locked in, on the same page and understand, like, we trying to do something special here. And I felt like your hands were tied a lot because you had to as a coach. You got to deal with so much.”
Nash then jumped in.
“I didn’t get to coach as much as I wanted to,” he said.
“That’s what it was. I didn’t think — we didn’t get the full Steve Nash, like I wanted, like you probably wanted,” Durant went on. “I just felt like it was just too many distractions in a way. And you know, you can’t win that way. But I felt like we had great intentions. I felt like we cared enough. I feel like every day we were trying to push towards winning the champ. It was a great vibe in there. Some of the best times.
“That first year? That’s why I signed that deal. That first year, man, most fun ball I had. Some of the most fun ball I had playing my whole life. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed Brooklyn a lot. I love playing for Brooklyn, but it’s just so much stuff happened around the guys that were committed to the situation. It felt like we were committed, but everybody else wasn’t.”
Was that the reason why he decided to demand a trade twice, once hours before his four-year, $198 million was to kick in? Why he demanded that the guy sitting next to him be fired as multiple writers, some of whom were being fed nuggets by KD’s inner circle, reported?
While Durant didn’t list any specific names, you don’t have to be sleuth to figure out who he was referring to. James Harden asked out without really asking out…until a few days before the 2022 NBA trade deadline. Kyrie Irving also missed a bushel of games during his Brooklyn tenure due to his stance against New York City’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate and after the team suspended him for refusing to unequivocally say he has no antisemitic beliefs, nor acknowledge specific hateful material in the film he posted a link to on social media, etc., etc.
Indeed, there was no mention of how Harden’s poor conditioning and habitual fondness for strip clubs irked KD. Nor was there mention of Durant’s annoyance with Irving’s serial bad behavior — referred to internally — as “antics.”
Nash’s claim that he “didn’t get to coach as much as he wanted to,” is a bit more curious. Whether or not he’s referring to his tenure as coach ending earlier than he had hoped, or if players or front office types prohibited him from running the team the way he wanted or that he had to spend more time dealing with babysitting than x’s and o’s, it’s unclear. And let’s not forget he was a rookie head coach, not just at the NBA level but period.
“Reality is, from my perspective, I felt a little bit like I let everyone down,” Nash later said. “But then I realized there was so much thrown at me. I just wish I had more of a chance to develop as a coach.”
Durant wouldn’t let his old coach take the blame. At one point, he jumped in and said “hell nah” when Nash first hinted at the idea that he let the team down.
“I just think your hands were tied too many times,” Durant said, again without specifics. “You had to be a principal more so than anything.”
That got some laughs out of all three guys, including James, who had somehow become the forgotten man in the room.
In the end, Nash and Durant chalked their failures up to injuries. Nash said at one point that James Harden “shouldn’t have even been out there,” surely referring to the 2021 Eastern Conference Semifinals and that Jeff Green was “in and out.” Durant then dropped Irving’s name in the injury context, Irving of course missed the final five games of that series with an ankle injury after being undercut by Giannis Antetokounmpo.
“I think we had a great chance to win it that year I stepped on the line,” Durant said. “Some shit happens that way — but I don’t think that should be an indictment on anybody. People don’t understand context though…what truly happens and how you need to really be connected as a group.”
“Some shit,” indeed. The pity party ended there. Durant wrapped things up pointing out that the basketball which took place in Brooklyn during his tenure was something to behold even if it didn’t translate to a banner. He argued that banners shouldn’t be the end-all-be-all.
“The dialog around the league, the discourse around the league, they don’t truly appreciate the journey,” Durant said. “Even the ones that don’t work out, you can still see some beauty in the Sacramento Kings that didn’t win the chip, right? Or your Phoenix Suns that didn’t win the championship. Like, if you really love the game of basketball, you can pull great things from all of that stuff. And that’s what I tend to do with that Brooklyn situation.”
Perhaps the best part of the interview came at the end, when Durant pulled one out for the die-hards, referencing his run of games during late 2021 when the league endured a COVID spike, leaving the Slim Reaper with slim pickings in terms of teammates.
“I’m being honest, we had more good times than not, even the times when it was me and four two-ways, like that was fun to me cause we locked in as a family, just us for that little 48 minutes,” he said. “And a lot of those games were high pressure games, late games. Even me, I learned from, but those young guys took a lot from that too. So I look at the season like that a lot.”
I’m guessing Durant was reflecting specifically on this game vs the Toronto Raptors that year, when he started alongside David Duke Jr., when Kessler Edwards logged 40+ minutes, Cam Thomas went for 22, and Day’Ron Sharpe for 13 in a 131-129 overtime win that propelled the team to 20-8 on the season.
“Of course, we want to win and go to the chip, but it’s little, small moments that I can appreciate throughout the year, even though we don’t add up to winning,” he said.
In the end, however, a cynic might note that Durant’s reputation at this point needs some repair. He’s been traded three times from Brooklyn to Phoenix and now to Houston. His time with the Suns was an unmitigated disaster, each year there falling more short than the one before it, from failing in the second round to getting swept in the first, then not even making the playoffs. Of course he would argue that it isn’t all about banners.
KD remains one of the greatest players in NBA history. Of the 5,000 men who’ve played the game in its near 80-year history, you’d have to say at the worst he’s in the top 10. And his time in Brooklyn may have been peak Durant but forgive us if we find our experience lacking.