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From the moment Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving signed with the Nets in 2019, they became one of the most talked about and scrutinized teams in sports. Whether it’s Stephen A. Smith on First Take or Skip Bayless on Undisputed , the media has been focused on the Nets during the last three seasons regardless of who’s been on the court.
There hasn’t been a dull moment with this Nets franchise ever since the biggest moment in franchise history on June 30, 2019. The drama in the KD-Kyrie started with Kenny Atkinson’s firing leading to Steve Nash’s hiring and it’s been a rollercoaster the whole way. From the James Harden brief stint up until last month where KD requested a trade, it’s fair to say that Nets have been a soap opera the past few seasons. With Kyrie’s recent trade request, this just might be the end of the long drama-filled story but you can never predict anything with this franchise at its current state.
With all that being said, here’s a chaotic timeline of some of the most critical events in the 7/11 era that have led us to where we are today.
Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving sign with the Brooklyn Nets
Date: June 30, 2019
It’s hard to be one of the “winners” of NBA Free Agency on day one, but the Brooklyn Nets accomplished just that when they signed KD and Kyrie as soon as free agency started. Overnight, the Nets went from a young, upstart team with a clear ceiling without a superstar to a team that would be in the championship conversation as soon as Kevin Durant was cleared to return from his achilles injury.
Kenny Atkinson is fired, Steve Nash is hired
Date: Mar. 7, 2020 & Sept. 3rd, 2020
When the Nets fired Kenny Atkinson in March of 2020, it raised many eyebrows. Whether it was fair or unfair, people immediately pointed to Durant and Irving as the catalysts behind the firing. Atkinson was the coach of the Nets when they had no draft picks, he was the coach of the Nets when they were expected to be a lottery team and overachieved, and now he wouldn’t get the chance to coach them when they had a roster good enough to compete for a championship. That’s why it was surprising when the Nets announced they had hired Steve Nash as their new head coach. In the five-month coaching search, he was never listed as a candidate by reporters close to the situation.
Date: Jan. 7, 2021
Kyrie Irving was expected to play against the Sixers on January 7, but was later ruled out due to “personal reasons.” It was reported later on that Irving didn’t reach out to any of the Nets front office personnel, and when a video leaked of him attending his sister’s birthday party, he was heavily criticized for it. This leave of absence from Irving didn’t dispel the narrative of Irving being consistently unavailable/unreliable and didn’t dispel the narrative of him being a “poor teammate.”
James Harden trade
Date: January 14, 2021
On the heels of Kyrie Irving’s leave of absence, the Nets traded for James Harden. In a matter of a few hours, the Nets went from championship contender to the most talented offensive trio in NBA history and the championship favorites. Now, anything less than a championship in year one would be seen as a disappointment, and the Nets seemed poised to be the NBA’s subsequent dynasty. Despite some questions from pundits about how well the trio would mesh on offense and how good their defense would be, within a few games together, those people were quickly silenced. It immediately became clear that this newly formed “Big 3” was the team to beat.
James Harden/Kyrie Irving injuries for the Bucks
Date: June 2021
Perhaps there is no better personification of the Brooklyn Nets experience since 2019 than the Nets/Bucks series in 2021. Less than a minute into the 2021 semis after playing one of the best series of his career versus the Celtics in Round 1, James Harden tweaked his hamstring and was ruled out indefinitely. After going up 2-0, featuring a Game 2 where the Nets were up by as many as 49 points led by brilliance of 7/11, the Harden trade started to look more like a luxury than a necessity. After Irving sprained his ankle in Game 4, the overwhelming championship favorites from two weeks ago suddenly became heavy underdogs. The injury to Irving proved to be too much for the Nets to overcome despite Kevin Durant delivering two of the greatest playoff performances of all-time in Games 5 and 7. Almost everyone who watched the series came to the same conclusion; the Nets would have won the 2021 NBA Championship if it weren’t for injuries.
Date: Oct. 12, 2021
When New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a mandate requiring New York City athletes to be vaccinated against COVID-19 to be eligible to play home games, most NBA fans didn’t think anything of it. That quickly changed, however, once it was revealed that Kyrie Irving was unvaccinated and didn’t plan on getting vaccinated in the immediate future. On October 12, the Nets announced that Kyrie Irving wouldn’t practice or play games until he was eligible to be a “full-time participant”, and Irving was sent home with no return date in site.
Date: December 17, 2021
Citing a desire to lessen the minute’s load of Kevin Durant and James Harden, on December 17, the Nets announced that they planned to bring back Kyrie Irving as a part-time player. At the time, Harden averaged 36.2 minutes per game, and Durant averaged 37 minutes per game. Although the Nets were the top seed in the Eastern Conference, in almost every matchup against a fellow “contender,” they underwhelmed and seemed as if they didn’t belong on the same court with them for long stretches. Opening night against the Bucks, November 16 vs the Warriors, and November 27 against the Suns are losses that immediately come to mind. Without Irving the Nets never truly looked like a championship caliber team.
Date: Jan. 15, 2022
The Nets suffered injuries to many key contributors in the past few seasons. Still, you can argue Durant’s injury against the Pelicans in January of 2022 was the biggest one. James Harden was now the only healthy star on the Nets who was eligible to play every game. Harden came to Brooklyn to form a dynasticm, unbeatable trio. With Durant now out because of injury and no vaccine exemption on the horizon for Kyrie Irving, the situation wasn’t panning out like Harden had planned. According to multiple reports, Durant’s injury expedited Harden’s unhappiness and desire to leave Brooklyn. The Nets went on an 11-game losing streak following Durant’s injury and plummeted from first in the conference to the play-In race.
James Harden-Ben Simmons trade
Date: Feb. 10, 2022
Two teams with championship aspirations in the same division swapped disgruntled stars. Considering the circumstances, the trade seemed like a “win-win” at the time for both the Sixers and the Nets. The Sixers got rewarded for holding out on trading Simmons until they believed they got a player as good or better as they did in Harden. The Nets got a 25-year-old perennial All-Star, a good scorer in Seth Curry, an all-time rebounder in Andre Drummond, and multiple first-round picks. Whether Irving would be eligible to play home games in the future was still the big elephant in the room that would ultimately determine the ceiling, but the public perception was still that the Nets were a championship caliber team after acquiring Simmons, Curry, and Drummond from the Sixers.
Nets Get Swept
Date: April 25, 2022
Despite the Celtics going into the series as the favorites, many media members and analysts viewed this as a true “Pick Em” series with many picking the Nets to win. In the series, the Celtics looked like a team firing on all cylinders while the Nets looked like a team with no chemistry and a unit that was still trying to figure out each other on the fly (which they were). The series was over within a week and a half. A season once full of optimism ended in unimagined disappointment.
Date: May 16, 2022
Despite Irving making it very clear on the ETC’s Podcast to co-host Eddie Gonzalez that he wanted to remain in Brooklyn on a long-term extension Sean Marks didn’t seem to share the same enthusiasm. In a postseason interview with former Nets reporter Michael Grady, Marks was asked about a potential Kyrie extension and his future with the Nets, Marks replied, “we will see what it looks like with Kyrie moving forward. We will see if it’s the right fit for both sides.”
Nets allow Kyrie to seek sign-and-trade opportunities.
Date: June 20, 2022
When Shams Charania reported that the Nets and Kyrie Irving were at an “impasse” on a potential contract extension on June 20, the general feeling among NBA fans was that this was a leverage play. An extension would eventually get done because the Nets wouldn’t want to risk alienating Kevin Durant by not extending Kyrie. However, just a week later, on the June 27, Adrian Wojnarowski reported that the Nets were allowing Kyrie Irving to seek potential sign and trade opportunities and the Nets were “vulnerable for a Kevin Durant trade request”, that feeling shifted. For the first time in the 7/11 era, it seemed as if Irving and Durant’s long-term future with the Nets were in question.
Date: June 27-30, 2022
On the same day, the Nets granted Kyrie the opportunity to seek sign-and-trade deals; he opted into the final year of his contract to “fulfill his four-year commitment to the Nets and Kevin Durant,” per Shams. That’s why it was a shock to the NBA World when KD asked to be traded from the Nets to the Suns and the Heat just days after Kyrie opted in. Despite previous rumblings that a trade request from KD was possible, most fans assumed that the trade request depended on whether Kyrie would be on the Nets for the 2022-23 season. With Irving under contract for next year, it was a bit of a head-scratcher for many people that Durant still asked to be traded.
Date: Aug, 8, 2022
For the first time since his trade request, fans got an inkling of why exactly KD wanted out of Brooklyn as “he didn’t have faith in the Nets direction,” according to Shams. Shams also stated that Durant also gave Nets Owner an ultimatum “trade him or fire Nash and Marks” in for him to rescind his trade request. Later that day, Tsai made it apparent that he didn’t plan on firing Marks or Nash and doubled down on his support for them. “Our front office and coaching staff have my support. We will make decisions in the best interest of the Brooklyn Nets.”
KD rescinds trade request
Date: Aug. 23, 2022
By all accounts, we have a resolution to the KD trade request. It seems that he is recommitted to the Nets in both the short and long term after a meeting that included his agent Rich Kleiman, Sean Marks, Steve Nash, Joe Tsai, and Clara Tsai. How this situation plays out long-term remains to be seen, but for now, all eyes of the basketball world will be on Brooklyn for at least one more season.
Kyrie's controversial tweet
Date: Oct. 27, 2022
If the Nets thought they were getting a drama-free season from Kyrie Irving, they thought wrong. Kyrie received backlash after tweeting a link on his Instagram and Twitter to the documentary Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America. According to a Rolling Stone report, the 2018 film promotes the thoughts that “Black Hebrew Israelites, which have a long history of misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, Islamophobia, and especially antisemitism.”
Image via Kyrie Irving's Twitter
Nets governor Joe Tsai would later go on Twitter and condemn from his star player, stating this was “bigger than basketball.”
Steve Nash is fired, Ime Udoka becomes likely replacement
Date: Nov. 2, 2022
If the Kyrie Irving backlash wasn’t enough, the Nets piled on by firing their head coach Steve Nash after seven games. The Nets were 2-5 to start the season before his exit. Nash’s tenure as the Nets coach only lasted two years and as you can see from this timeline included plenty of drama, roster turnover and controversy. The Nets topped that news by reportedly making Ime Udoka, who was just suspended by the Boston Celtics for the entire season, their lead candidate to replace Nash.
Kyrie gets suspended, apologizes on Instagram
Date: Nov. 3, 2022
After days of refusing to apologize and back-and-forth debates with media members, Kyrie Irving was suspended by the Brooklyn Nets for at least five games. The Nets went as far as to say Kyrie was “unfit to be associated with the Brooklyn Nets” in a statement released by the team. The day before the suspension, Irving and the Nets pledged $500,000 each to “causes and organizations that work to eradicate hate and intolerance in our communities” in a joint statement with the Anti-Defamation League.
Following his suspension, Irving went to Instagram to finally apologize to the Jewish community for his actions.
Kyrie requests trade
Date: Feb. 3, 2023
In the middle of what has been a successful season for the Nets, with the team in fourth place in the Eastern Conference standings and a favorite to make it to the Finals if healthy, Irving shocked the world. The All-Star point guard requested a trade ahead of the Feb. 9 trade deadline, announcing that he will leave in free agency if not dealt at the deadline. Irving and the Nets reportedly couldn’t agree on an extension.