Nets

The Boston Celtics didn't dodge the Nets and ended up with the sweep, taking Game 4 behind 29 from Jayson Tatum to take the series 4-0.

How do the Nets get younger, more athletic, and more defensive with the players around Durant and Irving? There are a lot of questions to answer for a front office and organization that has bent to the will of its stars for years. A savage round of postmortems come now for a Brooklyn team that was the betting favorite to win it all before the season started then became the only team not to even win a game in the first round. Then the Nets had no answers when they ran into another talented team — one who had put in the work and built good habits. There were flashes from the Nets and they made it tight down the stretch. The Celtics moved the ball all game long and trusted each other to make the right play. It was all too much for a Nets team that proved to be too top-heavy, not big or athletic enough, and lacked chemistry.

NEW YORK (AP) Jayson Tatum was stunned, yet certain. He disagreed with his sixth foul but had no doubt the Boston Celtics, with their rock-solid defense, ...

We want to help if he needs help in any aspect of his life and his game.'' Simmons cited mental health concerns as a reason he sought to leave Philadelphia and didn't suit up for the 76ers this season. But he went to the bench with a fifth foul with 8:17 remaining and the Nets made a push that got them within three points about three minutes later. He was 6 for 6 from the field but 1 for 11 at the free throw line, missing his first 10 before making the last one when the Celtics fouled him intentionally. With Durant, Irving and James Harden, the Nets began the season as a team that looked potent enough to win their first NBA title. The Nets were down only 45-44 with 3:29 to play in the second quarter. ''But as far as an organization, we're really pushing to support Ben in any way we can to help him improve physically and get back on the court, and then the mental side of that is part and parcel. The Celtics showed no fear of the Nets, who with Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving didn't have the profile of the typical low seed. Irving made a 3-pointer and Durant scored to cut it to 109-108 with 1:28 remaining. The Celtics beat Indiana in four games in 2019 and Philadelphia in 2020 at Walt Disney World. They lost 4-1 in the first round to the Nets last season. Celtics: Boston swept its first-round series for the third time in four years. Marcus Smart added 20 points and 11 assists for the No. 2-seeded Celtics, who made easy work of what was thought could be a tough series.

Brooklyn began the season with a core of Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and James Harden. They ended it with zero playoff wins and a crushing loss to the ...

By betting on themselves, the Celtics not only avenged their loss to the Nets in last year’s playoffs, but they may also have sent Brooklyn’s entire organization back to the drawing board. The Celtics were the best defensive team in the league in the regular season’s second half, and no slouches on the offensive end either. When Durant returned, he was pressed into service to drag the Nets into a seventh-place finish that required them to win a play-in game just to make the playoffs. With his team down 2-0 and facing a crucial Game 3, Nash seemed allergic to calling timeouts and designing plays, hoping that his vets would stumble into the right course of action on their own. So the Nets were without Irving for many games, Harden was in Philadelphia and Simmons was on the bench. With that said, being forced to make the Harden deal and settling with this particular return hurt Brooklyn’s chances of success this year.

It was easy to understand the preseason optimism: last time we saw the Nets, Kevin Durant was nearly carrying the team to a Game 7 victory over the eventual ...

Boston had the size, depth, and defense that the Nets couldn’t match up with. The rehab took longer than expected, and Harris eventually had a second surgery on the ankle that ended his year. He exited the lineup to have surgery on his ankle in Nov. with a 1-2 month timetable originally given. Harden started the season slow as he recovered from his hamstring injury in the playoffs and adjusted to the league’s early-season emphasis on cutting back shooting fouls. With Irving away from the team for road games and Durant facing injuries, Harden started to distance himself from the team. Simmons came to Brooklyn as the headliner in the Harden trade. As Irving’s absence hovered over the Nets, Harden reportedly got sick of his teammate’s refusal to get the jab and get back out on the court. By the time Irving was finally allowed to be a full-time player, James Harden had forced his way out of town and the roster around Durant and Kyrie looked totally different. The Nets kept Irving away from the team through 2021 until they eventually flip-flopped and decided to let Irving play in road games. That vaccine requirement extended to its two NBA teams, and there was only one player in the city who refused to comply: Kyrie Irving. The Brooklyn Nets were the heavy betting favorites to win the 2022 NBA championship entering the season. Unfortunately, the Nets were always scarier on-paper than they were on the floor.

When the Nets gave Steve Nash his first coaching job in 2020, his laid-back personality and ability to relate to enigmatic superstars such as Kevin Durant and ...

To salvage the balance of Durant’s prime, Brooklyn can’t settle for anything less than a philosophical reset. That’s well short of a championship standard, and the Nets paid for it during a one-sided series in which they were thoroughly outworked and out-executed. After their many trials and tribulations, they need to absorb this lesson: There’s a fine line between empowering stars and dereliction of duty. Nash’s joyous vision of the game was replaced by choppy, isolation-heavy offense and a scrambled defense that couldn’t get stops when they were most needed. Instead of staring down Harden and taking another shot with their “Big 3,” the Nets caved again and gambled on taking back Ben Simmons from the 76ers. Durant expressed his support after Game 4, noting that Nash had “been dealt a crazy hand” over the past two years. When Durant went down with a knee injury in January, the Nets, who entered the season as title favorites and aspired to be a superteam, were revealed as a one-man band missing its only reliable centerpiece. Irving’s decision to remain unvaccinated — and the Nets’ muddled response — set the tone for a wasted season. After months of noise surrounding his vaccination saga, the seven-time all-star exited with a whimper. His ineffectiveness was somewhat understandable — he logged more than 38 minutes per game after the all-star break and averaged 44 in the playoffs. With just one playoff series victory since they teamed up in 2019, it’s clear that Durant and Irving overestimated their leadership skills and vastly underrated the importance of traditional checks and balances in an organization. Less than two months later, they folded and welcomed him back on a part-time basis, willing to juggle their starting lineup and disrupt the rest of their roster to accommodate their star guard.

'Nobody is worse': ESPN analyst declares Ben Simmons 'the most pathetic athlete in history'

They said he woke up, his back hurt and he wasn’t able to play. Smith continued harping on Simmons on Monday’s edition of “First Take”, saying that he “might also be the weakest, most pathetic excuse for a professional athlete we’ve ever seen in not just American history but the history of sport.” Unless the Nets mount a miraculous comeback from down 3-0 against the Celtics, we are going to be treated to a long offseason of commentary about how they squandered their considerable talent, and what, if anything, they can do to retool for next year. ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported that Simmons and his agent Rich Paul met with Nets leadership to “talk through what they all needed to do together to continue to work on a plan to get Ben Simmons back on the court in Brooklyn.” There wasn’t much more to say. He said that the Nets were “clinging” to optimism that Simmons could be a difference-maker after the first two games in Boston were so close, and that Simmons himself had been very positive on the idea of playing for the previous 5-6 days. “When I talked to people involved, they were exasperated.