BuckFan25226 wrote:Spoiler:Badgerlander wrote:During his first three seasons, Atkinson built a more regimented culture with the goal of making the whole greater than the sum of its parts. In an interview with ESPN's Jackie MacMullan, he laid out the inevitable difficulties that would come with bringing two marquee free agents into the fold:
"Our whole setup can be a bit rigid. We're like a college program, in some ways. We have this car wash of very specific things with very specific people.
"But I can already see it morphing into something it was not before. When Joe Harris was trying to make it in the league, he was saying, 'I'll do whatever you want.' Now we're dealing with veterans who are saying, 'OK, this is how you do it. But this is how I've always done it, and this has worked for me.'"
https://syndication.bleacherreport.com/amp/2879778-report-kenny-atkinson-didnt-want-to-coach-nets-kevin-durant-kyrie-irving.amp.html“This is the NBA. Disagreements happen, it's an alpha male dominated environment, a highly competitive situation,” Spencer Dinwiddie said, being more tight-lipped than usual.
Atkinson preferred not to be around for KD, Kyrie
Multiple sources told Yahoo Sports that Atkinson wasn’t fond of coaching Durant and Irving based on what he saw this season, and would rather something happen now than at the end of the season.
That gibes with Marks saying he and Atkinson had been in discussions about this for weeks, even months now. It’s tough to embrace Atkinson putting so much into turning the franchise around, but ready to wash his hands of it months into this season.
Whether Atkinson didn’t bend enough to accommodate his accomplished veterans for fear of alienating those who knew him as something different, or the situation was too awkward to work, seems fair to speculate.
And it’s easy to like a “culture” from the outside before you have to put in the hard work that comes with maintaining it. It’s also easy to admire something from afar when you’re yearning to leave the Bay Area and Boston for something, anything else.
“Oh, it was definitely mutual,” a league source told Yahoo Sports.
For the Nets, their “culture” came at a cost and for anyone who thought otherwise, a culture only goes as far as the players allow it to, and even then there will be natural erosion over a period of time — hence why Marks alluded to Atkinson apparently telling him recently that “my voice is not what it once was here. It’s time.”
https://sports.yahoo.com/kenny-atkinsons-tenure-with-nets-comes-to-its-natural-conclusion-as-kd-kyrie-era-nears-014215773.html
I completely forgot about this.
That's actually awesome. For a young coach in that position to have the stones to basically say "eff these divas" and want out is somewhat incredible.
Atkinson is 55 two years older than Bud 53
