Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving have had their entire cobweb of influence laid bare. Matt Sullivan gave NBA fans tons of information in this interview.
Advertisement
There’s a section of NBA fans that has never really taken anything the league office or teams’ front offices say at face value. There has always been a reason for that. Anybody who’s worked on a business knows that there are myriads of ways you can bend the rules.
Interest and love for the sport of basketball is what gets fans attached to the best players of the league. But if they learnt how their favorite players are bending the rules, they might change their minds.
Matt Sullivan took a deep dive into the 2019-20 Brooklyn Nets season. He’d been granted permission by the team to work with the access of a Nets beat writer.
What Matt has uncovered through his book and recent interviews is beyond just game-planning and basketball strategy. He went the whole nine yards and got through to the team’s stars in a fashion that many writers would’ve failed if they tried to emulate him.
And he’s been able to uncover a ton of interesting stuff about these players’ personal lives. But there are other, slightly more disturbing reveals made to him that will pique NBA fans’ interest.
“Brooklyn Nets are willing to put up with Kevin Durant and his demands”: Matt Sullivan
Sullivan was invited by Dan Le Batard and Stugotz to their show for an interview on his book called ‘Can’t Knock the Hustle’. This book covers the most tumultuous NBA season of the past decade in detail. And it does so from the POV of Brooklyn Nets basketball.
Le Batard and Stugotz could barely contain their excitement and shock at some of Matt’s revelations. One of the biggest, most impactful stories that Sullivan revealed could also jeopardize the Nets’ standing with league officials.
This is how he laid out the Nets’ cap circumventions and the various ways in which they made KD and Kyrie feel in charge:
“I spoke with a high-ranking official with the Nets who watches over the money. And he said basically there was a blank check as soon as these guys got here.”
“Whether that’s buying a girlfriend or a girlfriend on the side something, or getting a house in CA for the week, or putting up money for the boys and equipment for random shit. They’re totally cool with covering that.”
“But they had to have some meetings with them. Because every week it was something new and they had to adjust the numbers. So I think that’s what makes the Nets a modern franchise. It’s not their fancy facilities or their defensive schemes, it’s that they are willing to put up with this.”
