Kyrie Irving Suspended, Jacque Vaughn Hired

This week on The Atlantic Files:

This week on the Atlantic Files podcast, Kyrie Irving was suspended after last week’s episode and then was given a list of initiatives to finish before he can even come back to the Brooklyn Nets, Jacque Vaughn gets upgraded from interim to head coach instead of Ime Udoka, James Harden and Pascal Siakam are both out for an extended time, and Kawhi Leonard has a cloudy path back to playing.

Some of the biggest non-basketball news has been unfolding before us and all of Brooklyn. After Kyrie Irving promoted a controversial video that had anti-semetic tropes, he was suspended from the Brooklyn Nets and now he has a laundry list of items to fulfill before he’s allowed back to the team. The NBPA is expected to appeal the suspension, but Irving has also been meeting with front-office members of the team as well as the NBA’s commissioner. This whole sideshow drags on as Nets fans have to watch their team try to finally live up to expectations.

In a smarter move from the Nets, they ended up not going with Ime Udoka as their next head coach. Former assistant coach, Jacque Vaughn, received the promotion to head coach for at least the rest of the season. Since he’s been there for the last five-to-six seasons, the players all know him and he can connect the pieces of the roster. His last tenure as a head coach in Orlando didn’t go too well though.

Kawhi Leonard continues to sit out more games than he plays since getting to Los Angeles. Now, he’s out indefinitely yet again while the recovery process doesn’t go as planned. What exactly is happening with all of this? Did something happen that caused a setback? Nobody seems to have any answers.

Finally, James Harden and Pascal Siakam both suffered injuries that are going to keep them out for an extended period of time. Can both of their teams stay afloat until they come back? Will this missed time set them back into a hole? We discuss this as well.

Timecodes:
00:00 Introduction
01:12 Kyrie Irving suspended, given a list of things to do to be allowed back
17:32 Jacque Vaughn is officially head coach of the Brooklyn Nets
28:56 What’s up with Kawhi Leonard?
35:56 Pascal Siakam and James Harden to miss some time
43:12 Outro

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