Nets betting Ime Udoka can keep Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving title window open

With every fired coach and failed trade, the Nets’ title window keeps shrinking. 

The window isn’t fully shut, but it’s awfully close.

Will Ime Udoka be able to lift the Nets to their ultimate goal before they pull the plug on the Kevin Durant - Kyrie Irving era? 

That remains to be seen. 

Barring a late change in plans, the Nets will finalize a deal with Udoka later this week. 

They’ll have to answer questions about their vetting process. Udoka, of course, was suspended by the Boston Celtics for the season due to several violations of team standards that included, reportedly, what transpired during a relationship with a female staff member. 

So the Nets will need to say why they viewed the situation differently than Boston. Explain why they were comfortable hiring Udoka when the Celtics concluded that he couldn’t coach the team a few months after he’d led them to the NBA Finals. 

The Nets will offer their reasoning and then Udoka will take the sidelines in Brooklyn, where he’ll try to succeed where Nash couldn’t: coaching Durant and Irving. 

Udoka is well-positioned for that. When he was an assistant with the Nets, Udoka had no issue challenging Irving and Durant, per people familiar with the matter. 

If he can establish that dynamic as head coach, the Nets may be in good shape. When your top players fully buy in to the head coach, the rest of the locker room usually falls in line. That often leads to success on the court.

Just which players Udoka will be coaching is an open question at this point. GM Sean Marks said on Tuesday that the current roster needs an upgrade.

“I'll be the first to tell you, there's certainly holes (in our roster). We're not a finished product,” Marks said. “We're not playing up to our expectations, the way we should be.”

So you can expect the Nets to pursue trade opportunities ahead of the February deadline. In the days before Saturday’s brutal loss to the Indiana Pacers, the Nets had been in cursory talks with one Western Conference team about a deal that would return a veteran shooter, per SNY sources.

Ben Simmons' name came up in the talks, sources say.

It’s unclear if talks advanced past the cursory stage, but Brooklyn was said to be aggressive in its pursuit of perimeter shooting.

And that was before the club fired Nash. So it’s reasonable to expect the team to take an aggressive approach in the trade market.

Can they make a move to keep their title window open a little longer? That remains to be seen. They certainly hope that the next transaction – the hiring of Udoka – can keep it from closing shut.