The Nets had won 12 of their past 14 games entering their nationally televised game against Phoenix on Saturday night. And though they lost to the white-hot Suns, they still remained atop the Eastern Conference.
And all this has happened without Kyrie Irving, who hasn’t played due to his refusal to adhere to New York City’s COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
The Nets have been content to give their All-Star guard his space. And when coaches and teammates have reached out to Irving, it has been about his well-being, not weakside defense. They just talk about him, not about basketball.
“At this point, I send certain messages because I know his phone’s getting blown up at this time,” DeAndre’ Bembry told The Post. “So I try to give him his space, because I know he’s just one of those people that needs his space sometimes to collect his thoughts and his energy and stuff. So for the most part, I definitely sent him a couple messages over this time to just check up on him, make sure he’s good.
“I know he’s good, I know he’ll figure this out and get through it. But for the most part, like I said, I try to give him his space, because I know I know how this could be. I know a lot of his family’s calling him, friends, fans and all type of people, so try to give them a little bit of space with all of this that’s going on.”
Bembry knows Irving as well as any Net. Like Irving, he’s a product of St. Patrick High in Elizabeth, N.J., and a protégé of coach Kevin Boyle.
Those close to Irving — from Bembry to Boyle to others that spoke with The Post — simply expressed a desire to be supportive, but to also give the 29-year-old guard his space.
“Exactly. That’s pretty it. If you know Ky, you know he loves his personal space,” Bembry told The Post. “So being able to let him work through this, because obviously we all want him back, but it’s more so about his decisions right now and what he wants to do. So we can’t really can’t really do too much about it. We just pray for him and hope that he can come back.”
Many in the Nets organization had expected Irving to have been vaccinated before training camp started, and were surprised he wasn’t. But to a man, they’ve said they will welcome him back with open arms when he becomes available, whether that’s because he gets vaccinated or the mandates loosen.
It’s unclear how the Omicron variant will change those mandates. But what is clear is that the Nets are content on giving Irving room.
“I stay in touch with Kyrie, but we don’t really talk about basketball,” coach Steve Nash said recently when asked by The Post, “Just stay in touch and make sure everything is good with him.”
Saturday’s sellout crowd of 18,071 was the Nets’ largest since moving to Brooklyn in 2012-13.
Bruce Brown (tight left hamstring) returned after missing the prior two games. He played a scoreless 4:36 off the bench.
Joe Harris (ankle) and Nicolas Claxton (non-COVID illness) were out.