Ben Simmons smiled and chuckled about the way he had been acting all day. Wednesday was the first time in 16 months that he had played in a meaningful basketball game, and he seemed positively effervescent.
“I think I was just too excited, honestly,” he said Wednesday night at Barclays Center. “It was just great to be out there.”
The outing did not go especially well. Simmons scored only 4 points and fouled out, perhaps a function of his enthusiasm, and his team lost by 130-108 to the New Orleans Pelicans. He was a bit rusty having missed all of last season with mental and physical health problems, starting in Philadelphia before he was traded to Brooklyn. But just the fact that Simmons played in the game was momentous.
His availability is emblematic of where the Nets find themselves at the start of this season. Kevin Durant is still on the team. Kyrie Irving should be available all season. And now Simmons is healthy. This season could offer a final word on what the Durant-Irving Nets can be, and how they respond to the pressure of having the pieces in place to be real contenders.
“Now you can see who we really are,” said Nets forward Markieff Morris. “Would you rather be a team where you have championship aspirations and a lot of pressure on you to win? Or would you rather be a team that’s tanking trying to get the number one pick? You got to pick your poison in this league. Playing with pressure is a good thing.”
It has been three years since Durant and Irving chose to join the Nets in free agency. Their arrival demanded patience, at first because Durant was working through an Achilles’ injury that would cause him to miss the entire 2019-20 season. That season was also interrupted by the onset of the pandemic, and when the season finished in the N.B.A. bubble, Irving did not join the team as he recovered from an injury.
The 2020-21 season was short, but the Nets finished it with the second-best record in the Eastern Conference. James Harden had joined them through a trade in January. They lost the conference semifinals in seven games to the eventual champion Milwaukee Bucks.
Then everything unraveled.
Irving decided he would not get vaccinated against the coronavirus, which meant he could not play any home games because of a local mandate. The Nets said they did not want a part-time player, until they did. They later did not agree to a maximum contract extension with Irving when they could have, and Irving affirmed his player option to stay in Brooklyn for the final year of his contract.
Frustrated by Irving, Harden asked for a trade and got it, swapping places with Simmons, and then more patience became necessary. Simmons, who hadn’t felt mentally able to play until the trade, missed the rest of the season with a back injury that required surgery. He spent the off-season healing and said he felt fully healthy at the start of training camp.
This summer’s final drama for the Nets came when Durant requested a trade in July. The Nets never found the right offer, if such a thing even existed for a player of his caliber. Reports surfaced that Durant had wanted General Manager Sean Marks and Coach Steve Nash fired. Durant has not confirmed those reports, and Nash referred to the whole episode as though it were a family disagreement.
The silver lining of an off-season that threatened the team’s stability was that the Nets were returning with two of the best players in the game, and a third more talented than most in the league.
All that’s left is for them to prove they can actually do this.
Wednesday’s game offered an inauspicious start to that quest. The Nets trailed the Pelicans by as many as 26 points and were outscored by 36-4 on second-chance points, a symptom of inconsistent effort.
“The same plays that demoralize the fans at home, demoralize us as players,” Irving said.
Pelicans forward Zion Williamson, like Simmons, returned after missing all last season, in his case with a foot injury. He looked less rusty than Simmons did, scoring 25 points, and New Orleans took advantage of his play.
“I think they beat us in every category tonight,” Nash said. “Clearly, we started the game a little hectic, a little bit rattled to start the year. Sometimes that’s normal. First night out excitement. New group. It was a little clunky at times.”
Durant led all scorers with 32 points, making 11 of 21 shots, with four blocks, a steal, two assists and three rebounds.
If one were to overreact to an opening night result, one might say these Nets are in big trouble. But the way they played on Wednesday didn’t match how they played in preseason games, perhaps hinting at their ability to play much better.
There were flashes of positivity in Wednesday’s game as well, like on one play when Irving darted in front of Larry Nance Jr. to steal the ball and throw it to Simmons for a dunk.
But to compete in the East this year will be no easy task. Milwaukee, led by Giannis Antetokounmpo, is still as formidable as they were two years ago when they won the N.B.A. championship. The Boston Celtics seem determined to improve upon last year’s finals loss to Golden State. The Philadelphia 76ers, led by Joel Embiid and Harden, will also challenge for supremacy in the conference.
In the waning seconds of Wednesday’s game, Durant sat all the way back in a seat on the bench with the hood of his sweatshirt pulled up tightly over his head. Occasionally, he turned to Simmons, who sat next to him, and said something as they watched the Pelicans complete their 22-point victory.
“We got 81 more of these,” Durant said later. He added: “It’s about just bouncing back, coming to work tomorrow and figuring it out.”
