Coach Steve Nash of the Brooklyn Nets and superstar Kevin Durant are “OK,” Nash stated on Tuesday. Nash reaffirmed the Nets’ message from media day after the start of training camp: they’ve moved past Durant’s unfulfilled trade request and the controversy that accompanied it. Even the bit where it’s either me or the coach and team president.
“Being as long as I’ve known Kevin, it didn’t bother me as much as everyone else,” Nash remarked. “Being a competitor entails this. I wasn’t startled, and I wasn’t concerned either. It was something I expected us to address in due course, and we did. And now we’re here, looking forward. It’s something else from which we can learn.”
Nash stated that he was shocked to learn that Durant had delivered an ultimatum to team owner Joe Tsai “That was never my expectation. It’s not all black and white. There are many reasons and activities going on behind the scenes.” He didn’t expressly deny any Durant-related information, but he did say that “a lot of things that are published are not 100 percent factual, so you get fragmented bits of truth, you get things that are flat-out not true.”
He stated he remained calm at the time and planned to “walk through it step by step” by speaking with Durant and president Sean Marks. He stated that “it was never really as big a concern to me” as it was to others because he witnessed it all during his 18-year playing career and his coaching time in Brooklyn.