Steve Nash has kept a decidedly low profile since the Nets fired him. But the 50-year-old pulled back the curtain a bit on his stay in Brooklyn, and what shocked him about his failed coaching stint.
Handed a potential super-team with Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving in 2020, Nash was eventually let go in November 2022 despite a 94-67 record.
Having never even been an assistant before that, Nash admitted recently that the job wasn’t at all what he’d expected.
“I was surprised when I coached, you’re not in the team that much,” Nash told Eurohoops. “You have five minutes with players before the game, at halftime, and after the game. Those are the only times when you address the team.
“I wanted to connect with every player individually. It’s important to build a culture and an environment where people believe and see them be their best. You need to feel that you want them to become the best version of themselves.”
Nash was speaking in Slovenia at a retirement event for Goran Dragic, who played behind Nash as a point guard in Phoenix and then under him in Brooklyn in 2022.
Dragic, who’d been schooled in the vaunted Heat culture in Miami, has made comments in the past about how difficult his time with the Nets was because the franchise seemed more concerned with pacifying stars than winning.
Irving, who’d said shortly after Nash’s hiring that he didn’t see the Nets as having a head coach, repeatedly blew off his play calls.
Nash, a Hall of Fame point guard, had been accustomed to leading winning teams as a floor general. But he found trying to lead strong personalities from the bench an entirely different job.
“The most important thing is, to be honest with the players, you can deliver that in different ways,” said Nash. “It’s important to be clear and honest with players so that they’re not unsure. Communication is the key.
“The easy part for me was being comfortable with my leadership role, leading by example. What is actually difficult from a coaching perspective is that it’s a totally different leadership. When you’re coaching you have to lead in smaller moments.”
Nash was lured to Brooklyn in September 2020 by general manager Sean Marks, his longtime friend from their playing days.
Marks had tried to get him to join the Nets organization before, and kept offering better and better positions until finally the opportunity to become a head coach was just too good for Nash to pass up.
“I hadn’t planned to coach, there was a unique situation in Brooklyn that knocked on my door,” Nash said. “It was a quick transition. You deal with a different dynamic. A lot of it is managing personalities, between front offices, players and agents. That’s a huge component of my job. All the dynamics, personalities, and power that the players hold nowadays.”
After Durant tried to get Nash fired in the summer of 2022, Nets owner Joe Tsai refused.
But the Nets let him go just seven games into the next season, have since fired successor Jacque Vaughn and also interim coach Kevin Ollie.
Jordi Fernandez will begin his first season as Nets coach in October.
