Kenny Atkinson is convinced the Brooklyn Nets will benefit from their experience this season. There’s definitely something to the saying “The strongest steel is forged by the hottest fire.”
But the level of the Nets’ struggles combined with Kyrie Irving’s comments about the roster earlier in the season does beg the question: how many of these guys will Brooklyn keep? That question then leads into the bigger one: what will things look like when Irving and Kevin Durant return?
“I’ve told KD and Kyrie, ‘We don’t need you guys flying in on your capes,'” Atkinson said before the Nets knocked off the Boston Celtics on Tuesday. “We’d love to have you fly in on your capes, but this will be good for us to go through this, what we’re going through now. I really believe that.”
At the same time, the Nets head coach knows fully well his team needs to pick it up they plan to make the 2020 NBA Playoffs.
But going back to Brooklyn’s future, Atkinson also admits he still has to figure out how Irving and Durant work together. Though, he’ll have the chance to do that over the summer. But, it doesn’t end there with Irving.
The Nets have three talented guards in Irving, Spencer Dinwiddie and Caris LeVert — each of which is best with the ball in their respective hands.
“That would be the piece where we’d still have to figure that out what that looks like,” Atkinson said. “You got a lot of ball-dominant guards there. That being said, Spencer and Caris, especially with D’Angelo, they played a lot without the ball. I think D’Angelo’s usage rate was higher than Kyrie’s, if I’m not mistaken. So, we can definitely do it. And at the end of the day, sometimes we get carried away with how the pieces [fit]. You find a way if you have really good players. That would be up to the coaching staff to figure out how the pieces work.”
Still, figuring out these things with Irving and Durant seem like problems the Nets would be more than happy to have at this point, given what’s gone on recently.