Things are not well in Brooklyn.
The Brooklyn Nets lost to the Milwaukee Bucks on Wednesday 110-99. The loss dropped the Nets to 1-3 on the season.
In a vacuum, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with losing to the Bucks. Milwaukee features an annual MVP candidate in Giannis Antetokounmpo and a slew of talented stars surrounding him.
But NBA seasons don’t happen in a vacuum, and given the way the Nets have been struggling since last season, there are some genuine concerns about the way in which they lost to the Bucks.
It’s been a tumultuous 18 months for the Nets, from Kyrie Irving’s vaccination status not allowing him to play in every game to the pathetic way in which Brooklyn was swept out of the playoffs last year to Kevin Durant’s offseason trade demands.
That tumult appears to be having a tangible effect on head coach Steve Nash.
The normally cool and collected Nash was subject to his first career ejection as a coach on Wednesday night, getting tossed out late in the third quarter of a game still within reach.
You can watch Nash’s wild-eyed tantrum and ejection in its entirety below:
Steve Nash gets T’d and ejected! Thank you Steve!!! We’re all tired of the bs. These refs call a different game for them… pic.twitter.com/Bklp3nxf1J
— Talkin’ Nets (@TalkinNets) October 27, 2022
A still-peeved Nash was seen entering the locker rooms while throwing something:
Coach Nash was HEATED leaving the arena last night 😳 (via nollenntabaska/IG) pic.twitter.com/uWKlp4mq5e
— Overtime (@overtime) October 27, 2022
The coach later claimed he was defending one of his players when he lost his cool.
“I was just standing up for our guys,” Nash said during his postgame news conference. “I thought [Nets guard] Patty [Mills] took a forearm in the throat from Giannis right in front of the ref, and I didn’t think that was fair.
“So I don’t think I was overly demonstrative, and I was upset that I got a technical.”
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Nash might not be thrilled with the state of the Nets, but he really doesn’t have anyone to blame but himself. As the head coach, he is the head guy in charge of the team — just not according to his own players.
“I don’t really see us having a head coach,” Irving said on Durant’s podcast after Nash was hired in 2020. “You know what I mean? [Durant] could be a head coach. I could be a head coach.”
“It’s a collaborative effort,” he added.
To be fair to Irving, he did walk back those comments some months later. Regardless, they led to some intense scrutiny about whether Nash was a puppet hire to placate Irving and Durant.
So if Nash doesn’t have the prerequisite years of experience, taskmaster coaching acumen or even the general respect of his roster, what does he bring to the table? Not much besides woke nonsense.
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It’s hard to separate Steve Nash the struggling head coach from Steve Nash the leftist bleeding heart, and that should be a problem. Even noted leftist loon Gregg Popovich can at least claim he’s an elite head coach. With Nash, observers are mostly just left with his woke nonsense.
Let’s not forget the time Nash spouted outright lies about gun control.
Or the time he complained about his own “white privilege” after becoming the Nets coach.
“Well, I have benefited from white privilege,” Nash told reporters shortly after he was hired in 2020. “Our society has a lot of ground to make up.”
Again, it might be different if he had the coaching history and acumen of a Popovich. For as much leftist nonsense as the Spurs coach spews, he at least has a track record of winning and developing superstars.
Nash gets no such benefit of the doubt, and he shouldn’t.
If the former two-time NBA MVP can’t focus on the state of his team, he might very well have a lot more free time on his hands to focus on all that woke nonsense. According to multiple betting sites, Nash is one of the favorites to be the first NBA coach fired this season.
