It’s championship or bust for the Brooklyn Nets, and new head coach Steve Nash knows it. The Nets are not here to participate. Anything short of a title and the season will be marked as a failure.
Tuesday afternoon, Nash acknowledged the high expectations that Brooklyn has:
“We’re playing for a championship,” Nash said during the event, which aired on the YES Network. “I don’t want to say that anything less than a championship is not a success because you never know what happens in life, you never know the way the ball bounces. Fortune is a big part of winning an NBA championship.
“But we are playing for a championship and we’re going to build accordingly. We’re going to frame everything we do in the lens of, ‘Is this a championship characteristic?’ or ‘Is this worth championship quality?'”
The Nets knew the 2019-20 season was a lost year. Both Kevin Durant needed the year to recover from his torn Achilles. Kyrie Irving was also injured (but he kind of always is). Kyrie wasn’t super engaged without KD on the floor anyway. The eyes have always been on the 2021 prize.
The pressure is on, and the most crucial offseason in Nets history starts now. Will Brooklyn try to acquire a third star, or will they role with the other complementary pieces they have?
Steve Nash was a surprise hire, but this is the guy that Kyrie and KD wanted. While Nash doesn’t have extensive coaching experience, he played under the tutelage of Mike D’Antoni. It remains to be seen what Nash plans to implement, but something similar to the up-tempo style of D’Antoni is a good guess.
