Brooklyn Nets are a natural and unnatural NBA disaster | Michael Arace

The Boston Celtics suspended coach Ime Udoka for a year for “violating team policies.” According to The Athletic, Udoka had engaged in “an improper intimate and consensual relationship with a female member of the team staff.” Udoka has been engaged to actress Nia Long since 2015 and the couple has a child. The flesh, it is weak.

Here’s a question: Udoka’s suspension began on Sept. 23, or a little more than a week before training camp opened. Does that make him the first coach of the season to be fired? I’m saying no. A “suspension” is not a firing and, at the time, the NBA was, technically speaking, on summer vacation.

There are some folks in NHL circles who were beginning to think that Blue Jackets coach Brad Larsen might be the first coaching casualty of 2022-23. Given the way the Jackets (3-7) have been playing, the thinking is not unsound. But GM Jarmo Kekalainen does not have a hair trigger, and Jackets ownership doesn’t like eating coaches’ contracts. Under different circumstances, John Tortorella would have been gone a year earlier.

We didn’t have to wait long for an ax to drop somewhere. To the surprise of nobody, least of all the man who was fired, Steve Nash and the Brooklyn Nets “mutually agreed” to part ways Tuesday. The Nets are 2-6.

Nash, a Hall of Fame point guard, cut his teeth as a coach during the pandemic-condensed season of 2020-21. He welcomed James Harden after a blockbuster trade with the Houston Rockets. He bid farewell to Harden after a blockbuster trade with the Philadelphia 76ers. And then he welcomed Ben Simmons, who is paid handsomely to play basketball but doesn’t seem to want to.

The two best Nets, Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving – the one a future Hall of Famer and the other a Hall-of-Fame talent – are as coachable as natural disasters. They’re powerful, awe-inspiring and can destroy everything in their paths, including their opponents, their own locker room and whatever their coach drew up on the whiteboard. Nash, as a coach, was no match for them, especially after Durant made it known last summer that he wanted the coach and/or GM fired, and asked for a trade.

As for Irving, who missed most of last season’s home games because he refused to be vaccinated, he’s something else altogether. He has been in the NBA for 12 years and has gone through nine coaches. There’s no need to get into the chapter and verse on World B. Flat; a quick description of the past few days will do.

Irving, in a postgame interview, attempted to defend his social-media promotion of an antisemitic film, not to mention a conspiracy theory which suggests the government is trying to enslave the population. Then, Nets fans wearing “Fight Antisemitism” apparel showed up courtside. Then, Nash got fired. Then, the GM had to explain why Irving was taking a break from talking while the Nets worked with the Anti-Defamation League to craft a message of religious tolerance. Then, Irving missed 10 shots from the field, including six 3s, and scored four points in a 108-99 loss to the Chicago Bulls.

Kanye West, now known as Ye – who has his own problems with antisemitic proclamations – came to Irving’s defense. Others, such as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, called Irving to task.

Tuesday night on TNT’s Inside the NBA, the best studio show on television, Charles Barkley said NBA commissioner Adam Silver should have already suspended Irving.

Barkley said, “First of all, Adam is Jewish — you can’t take my $40 million and insult my religion. You gonna insult me, you have the right, but I have the right to say, ‘You can’t take my $40 million and insult my religion.’ I think the NBA, they made a mistake. We’ve suspended people and fined people who have made homophobic slurs. And that was the right thing to do.”

Shaquille O’Neal spoke for most of humanity when he said, “It hurts me sometimes that we got to sit up here to talk about stuff that divides the game. That we gotta answer for what this idiot has done.”

The GM, Sean Marks, has mortgaged the future on what was supposed to be a “super team.” Caris LeVert, Jarrett Allen and Harden are but part of the price he paid. In Harden’s case, he paid coming and going: four first-round picks and four first-round pick swaps were sent to Houston for the acquisition. Simmons was the return and, after two years of inaction and a back surgery, there is still no indication that he can make a jump shot.

Reportedly, Marks is looking at Udoka, the disgraced former Celtics coach, to turn everything around.

marace@dispatch.com

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Kyrie Irving, Brooklyn Nets are a natural and unnatural NBA disaster