Was Steve Nash a bad coach or set up to fail in Brooklyn?

Amit Mann is joined by Kristian Winfield of the New York Daily News to get the facts and insight on what players, media and fans thought of Steve Nash as a coach. Listen to the full episode on the 'Raptors Over Everything' podcast feed.

Video transcript

AMIT MANN: His coaching record was 94 and 67. So he has that in his resume. I wonder with the Raptors thing that maybe he didn't actually interview that well. But because he's Steve Nash, it's a PR thing. Like, you're not going to be in our top three. And it kind of just goes away. Like, either he's a coach, or he's not. So you just say, like, yeah, he impressed just to keep him in the good books if he does want to entertain coaching again. But realistically, I don't think he's going to become the Raptors head coach. I don't think he's in the top three, to be honest, because there's too many much more capable people that are probably, you know, more talented more equipped to handle this job.

KRISTIAN WINFIELD: Let me tell you something real quick.

AMIT MANN: Sure.

KRISTIAN WINFIELD: The Nets, I mean, you could have said the same thing for them. I mean, you had a plethora of options that you could have gone with to coach a championship team, that you knew needed a championship-caliber head coach. And they-- I don't want to say fell for the trap, but--

AMIT MANN: You just look behind you. Just look behind you.

KRISTIAN WINFIELD: Yeah.

AMIT MANN: All those guys.

KRISTIAN WINFIELD: You have the allure of this guy who did it at such a high level. And at a certain point, you have to respect that, right? I get it. You have to respect the basketball mastermind. You have to respect the IQ. And he has this-- it's not surprising to me that he impressed in an interview because he has that type of magnetism about him. I want to see him impress in a simulation of 5 seconds left on the game clock, coach call up a play that wins us a game.

AMIT MANN: Sure.

KRISTIAN WINFIELD: Show me-- show me him impress in that simulation. And then show me how he fares against the other coaches that are calling the same play in that drill. I guarantee you I know how that comes out.

AMIT MANN: So just alluding to that, so play design out of timeouts, end of games, how did Steve Nash fare? You mentioned the timeouts things, and especially with Joe Mazzulla now, who's going--

KRISTIAN WINFIELD: There was nothing. There was no--

AMIT MANN: Yeah, go ahead.

KRISTIAN WINFIELD: I'm sorry cut you off. There were no--

AMIT MANN: It's all good.

KRISTIAN WINFIELD: I don't have a point of reference. The offense was just so plainly vanilla to get the ball to KD and Kyrie or James and get out of the way, that, like, there were no play calls. And that's not me being-- that's not me not paying attention. oh, I didn't watch it all. No, I watched all the plays. I watched every single game that Steve Nash coached.

I cannot tell you a time where I said, oh, that's a good out-of-bounds call, a good ATO that Steve Nash called. And I know that because I watched Kenny Atkinson draw up some amazing ATOs. I watched Kenny Atkinson turn a team of D'Angelo Russell, Caris LeVert, Spencer Dinwoody, Taurean Prince, all those guys into, you know, teams that were actually competing because they had to be creative offensively. And granted, when you get Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, you have to lean on their isolation talents, right? Sure, you'd be foolish not to.

But it just becomes predictable. And it did become predictable for the Nets to where, like, it's tough for me to tell you what his out-of-bounds play calling package is because I don't know, right? It's tough for me to tell you what his offensive philosophy is except him saying, you know, we want it to be free flowing because I don't know. I mean, the smart thing for him to do was get the ball to KD and Kyrie and get out of the way.

AMIT MANN: Yeah.

KRISTIAN WINFIELD: But you have to have more than that, as we're seeing in the playoffs. I mean, we watched his team, his Nets team, get packed up by-- and I don't even like blaming Steve Nash for that series because, I mean, you had a Nets team that was beaten up all year, going up against the Celtics, who were, you know, going on to the NBA Finals. It was tough. But at the same time. I mean, you have to show some level of, OK, let me create some type of offense for guys that doesn't rely on stars. And Steve Nash did not do that in his tenure.

AMIT MANN: Was it confirmed that he was hired because Kyrie and Kevin Durant and them wanted him to be the coach?

KRISTIAN WINFIELD: No, I couldn't personally confirm that. I heard otherwise. I heard that was, like, not Kevin Durant's guy. But there was so much information and misinformation going on around that that I'm not even, like, 100% who wanted who. I was told, though, that was not the guy that KD wanted. And here we are anyway.

And it's tough. You know, sometimes you've got guys that have connections to the front office. And think about it this way, the Nets didn't fire Steve Nash after the sweep, right? They gave him another 11 games-- not even, seven games at the beginning of the season to try it. And you had guys like Kevin Durant and Kyrie who were actively trying to get him fired by how they were playing. I watched-- I watched Kyrie Irving shoot turnaround, fadeaway threes for the first time in my life contested in those first seven games-- multiple.

We knew those shots weren't going in, right? I watched Kyrie-- I watched Kevin Durant get pissed off and slap the scorer's table so hard, you know, like, in broad daylight. I watched some of the craziest things happen while Steve Nash was on the sidelines. I watched him get booed at Brooklyn Bridge Park by fans. I've never seen anything--

AMIT MANN: Oh my God.

KRISTIAN WINFIELD: Yeah, that would be my-- it's unfortunate. That'll be my lasting memory. The guy, you know, came in, you know, magnetic personality. And by the time it was all over, the fans had turned on him. So I forget-- I forget the question you were asking. But it's--

AMIT MANN: I think you answered it. You answered it. You answered it.

KRISTIAN WINFIELD: And I don't want this to come off as like, oh, this guy's a Steve Nash hater. You know, I'm just trying to provide context.

AMIT MANN: It's real, though. It's real, though. And this is what I was trying to get to the bottom of. I wanted to understand how bad was it really.

KRISTIAN WINFIELD: I'm looking on social media, and all people are just having some, like, revisionist history of Steve Nash's time here. No, no, no, I will not be that guy. I will tell it how it is.

AMIT MANN: So if I ask you the question, like, do you think he had control of his own success or failure, I would imagine you're probably looking at it like, well, it's kind of both, but mostly yes. He was the head coach. And he decided what happened on the court. But he was also not qualified to be in that position. So it does kind of go back to a layer up, which is the front office, and why did you do this?

KRISTIAN WINFIELD: Yeah. Did Steve Nash have control of his own success? I'm inclined to say no because I think his success was entirely dictated on having Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving on the floor in the first place, right? Which I mean-- but you could say that for any coach, right? You could say that for Steve Kerr.

But, no, you can't say that's for Steve Kerr, right, because you see Steve Kerr come in with the same core that Lamar Jackson had kind of topped out at and then redefine their offensive identity, and now off they go. I think there's just different levels to this coaching thing. And with Steve Nash, it was really just, OK-- it just became so vanilla of get the ball to KD, get the ball to Kyrie, and let them win us a game with their own individual greatness.

So KD and Kyrie are too-- I wouldn't say to blame. They are-- they're responsible for that record that Steve Nash has on his coach-- on Basketball Reference or wherever you look. Whatever the record is, above .500, that's KD and Kyrie's record. And those guys didn't even play. When you're talking about James Harden as well, those guys didn't even play that many games either. So it's tough.

But I really like to point to the games and the stretches where guys missed games, right? When KD went down and you still have James Harden and Kyrie Irving, or when KD went down you've got Kyrie leading a bunch of guys, and you can't come up with some sort of offensive flow, those are going to be some of the lasting memories that I have. And I think we all point to the front office because they were supposed to know better, right?

You cannot just go get a rookie head coach who-- I mean, yes, you can, because they did it, right? But you are not supposed to go get a rookie head coach with no prior you know, actual coaching experience, even as an assistant, and then to have him go with two of the most high-profile, high-maintenance stars in this history-- in the history of this game, right? You're going to throw him into that fire?