Caitrina Mullaly '25
When a player puts up a shot and it goes right over the rim not touching the backboard just sinking through the net, the crowd goes wild, for the “nothing but net” shot. However, the Nets started the season with a 2-5 record, the firing of their head coach Steve Nash, and a huge public scandal with one of their star players, Kyrie Irving.
Only seven games into the season, the mutual decision between Nash and the Nets was that Nash should go. On November 1, 2022 the final decision was public, Nash was gone. Over the last three seasons the Nets have had a 94-67 record while Nash was the head coach. Adrian Wojnarowski, an ESPN Senior NBA Insider, has given his take on this situation, “This has been a discussion, within the Nets, with Steve Nash, and Management Ownership here in the last few days, as this season really just started to unravel.”
The star point guard Kyrie Irving posted on Instagram on October 27th, a link to a documentary called, Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America. This documentary was viewed as an anti-Semitic video leaving tons of people mad, Jewish or not Jewish. He has received major backlash from this post, being suspended for eight games and his Nike sponsorship being canceled. Nike’s response to this situation was, “At Nike, we believe there is no place for hate speech and we condemn any form of anti-Semitism… To that end, we’ve made the decision to suspend our relationship with Kyrie Irving effective immediately and will no longer launch the Kyrie 8. We are deeply saddened and disappointed by the situation and its impact on everyone.”
As of November 20th, the Nets have a 7-9 record, improving game by game. They have a new head coach Jacque Vaughn, and Kyrie’s suspension has ended. Everyone’s questioning the Nets' future this season with starters like Kevin Durant (power forward), Ben Simmons (point guard), and Joe Harris (shooting guard). Some fans are still extremely affected in a negative way by the drama so early in the season, but others would like to look at it differently with a hopeful perspective since all of this did happen so early they can move on. With the drastic changes can the Nets push through and make their way out of 10th place to the top 5?
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