NEW YORK — Usually, media days around the NBA are a sterile soft launch for the upcoming season. Each team has its problems and joys, but on days like this, it’s just white noise preset at just right the volume; loud enough to let you know basketball is near and too inaudible to pull all that pablum apart.
Then there are the Nets, an organization that faced one of its toughest tests of the season Monday: trying to explain what the heck happened to them this offseason. Ben Simmons, the 26-year-old All-Star 15 months removed from his last game, spoke for just the third time in his seven-plus months with the Nets, and that was an amuse-bouche to the menu of issues the team had to sort out.
The Nets’ summer, as Kyrie Irving pithily summed up, was a “kind of a clusterf—.”
There was Kevin Durant — who put in a trade request because he was worried all the “uncertainty” with the Nets could put the next years of his career at risk and then rescinded it but only after telling the team owner it was either him or the general manager and head coach — the first to speak.
General manager Sean Marks and coach Steve Nash talked a few hours later. Simmons revealed that he is healthy and cleared to play, ostensibly clearing the way for the Nets’ latest Big Three to finally debut next month.
Irving had his time at the microphone, too.
