Kyrie Irving’s hiatus undid the Nets season. To keep the star guard from hurting them again down the road, he needs both an attitude adjustment to co-exist with Steve Nash and likely a long sitdown with Kevin Durant to get him there.
It’s easy to dismiss that as a hot take coming from somebody outside HSS Training Center. But when it’s coming from Amar’e Stoudemire – who spent the past two years as a Nets player development assistant – one has to take note.
“It definitely hurt us because we didn’t have the consistency with Kyrie enough to build the chemistry for the group of the team, right?” Stoudemire said Thursday on ESPN. “Plays only the away games depending on which city it is. Can’t play in New York. So therefore we have different lineups and different matchups depending on the game scheduling.
“And so it made it difficult for us as coaches to figure out, ‘Well, who’s going to play in spite of Kyrie?’ The chemistry is not quite there [how] we would like it to be, so [it was] difficult for us to manage that.”
