Nash downplays drama around Durant’s demands of Nets

NEW YORK (AP) — Carlos Carrasco had another short start Tuesday night, lasting just three innings as the New York Mets fell into a first-place tie in the NL East with a 6-4 loss to the Miami Marlins.

The Marlins closed out New York not long after Atlanta completed an 8-2 victory over Washington. The Mets and Braves are both 97-58 with seven games left.

The Mets have held sole possession of the division lead for all but four days this season. They were up by 10½ games on June 1.

“This is fun — this is really, really fun, being in a race like this,” said first baseman Pete Alonso, whose three-run homer made him the first Mets player with multiple 40-homer seasons. “Tomorrow’s another chance for us to be great and we just want to continue to play the great baseball we’ve been playing all year.”

The Mets and Braves are scheduled to play a three-game series this weekend in Atlanta, though Hurricane Ian could force at least one postponement or a relocation of the series.

“I know that we’ve got a big series coming up with a lot of stuff,” Alonso said. “But realistically, we’re just ready to focus up for (Wednesday).”

The Marlins scored twice against Carrasco (15-7) in the first, when Bryan De La Cruz delivered a sacrifice fly and Brian Anderson raced home on a wild pitch. They added two more in the third, when JJ Bleday hit a 339-foot homer just over the right-field wall.

Carrasco and Mets manager Buck Showalter both lamented the right-hander’s inability to find his curveball to go along with his fastball and changeup.

“Some guys can get by with the two, but that heavy a right-handed lineup you probably need it,” Showalter said. “Just kept waiting for him to get it going.”

Carrasco allowed six hits and walked one while throwing four or fewer innings for the fourth time in his last six starts, a stretch in which he has a 4.94 ERA. The 35-year-old pitcher was sidelined from Aug. 16 through Sept. 3 with a strained left oblique.

The Marlins answered Alonso’s homer in the fifth, when catcher Jacob Stallings hit a tworun single off Trevor Williams. The Mets had a baserunner in each of the next four innings but scored only in the eighth, when Jeff McNeil singled with two outs and came around on three balks by Richard Bleier as the lefthander pitched to Alonso.

Dylan Floro struck out all three batters in the ninth to earn his eighth save and preserve the win for starter Pablo Lopez (1010), who allowed five hits and struck out five over six innings.

Lopez, who entered with an 11.34 ERA in four starts this year against the Mets, retired the first nine batters he faced before Brandon Nimmo singled.

“I can’t tell you how good this one feels,” Lopez said. “I’ve been looking forward to this one. And just being able to put together a good start like Jacob and I did is very fulfilling.”

New York Yankees star Aaron Judge, back center, sprays his beer in a team photograph after the Yankees clinched the AL East on Tuesday night with a win over the Toronto Blue Jays in Toronto. The Yankees won 5-2.

NEW YORK (AP) — The final days of a disappointing Brooklyn Nets season ended not with Ben Simmons on the floor with his teammates, but on the floor of his home, the pain from a back injury shooting through his lower body.

The Nets would go on to get swept by the Boston Celtics, with Simmons having back surgery shortly thereafter. While Simmons was rehabbing in the summer, Kevin Durant requested a trade — unless coach Steve Nash and general manager Sean Marks were fired.

Nash wasn’t sacked, nor was he even shaken.

“Knowing Kevin as long as I have, it didn’t really bother me the way maybe everyone would think,” Nash said. “That’s a part of being a competitor, that I wasn’t like overly surprised and I wasn’t even overly concerned. It was just something that I thought we would address in time and we did, and here we are and we’re looking forward.”

The Nets opened training camp Tuesday with Simmons finally on the floor with his teammates, wearing a new number. But the book wasn’t closed on 2021-22 just yet, not with Nash first having to revisit the tumultuous summer.

He and Durant have had a lengthy relationship: Nash was a consultant with Golden State during Durant’s stint with the team. When the Hall of Fame point guard was hired as Nets coach in 2020, despite no experience, it was assumed that the superstar player had weighed in.

So it was shocking when reports surfaced that Durant wanted him out, except to Nash.

“You know, I never thought that was 100%. There’s a lot of things that it’s not black and white like that,” Nash said. “So there’s a lot of factors, a lot of things behind the scenes, a lot of things that are reported are not accurate. A lot of things that are reported are not 100% accurate, so you get fragmented bits of truth, things that are flat-out not true.”

Nash said he knew he would talk to Durant at some point, and they did meet in August, along with Marks and owners Joe and Clara Wu Tsai, where they decided to continue together. Nash wouldn’t specify what was said to get Durant back on board.

“But it was an opportunity for us to clear the air and just communicate and it was pretty straightforward,” Nash said. “Didn’t take a lot of time and got to bottom of it and decided to move forward.”

Durant pointed to how poorly the Nets played while he was sidelined by a knee injury in January and February as one of the reasons for his frustration, saying the team wasn’t respected by its opponents.

That was confirmed Tuesday by newcomer Markieff Morris, who played with Miami last season.

“I agree with what he said. They were soft,” Morris said. “Point blank. When we played against them, they were soft. Just go right in their chest. That’s what we did.”

Having Simmons should help. He was an All-Defensive firstteam pick in his final two seasons in Philadelphia, with the size and strength to guard all five positions.

“He’s strong as hell,” Morris said.

Simmons sat out training camp last year after deciding he would no longer play in Philadelphia for mental health reasons. The 76ers eventually sent him to Brooklyn in February in a deal headlined by James Harden, but the 2016 No. 1 draft pick’s back problems flared up soon after he arrived.

It turned out Simmons had a herniated disk and had a procedure to remove a portion of it in the offseason.

“I don’t think people really realized where I was at,” Simmons said. “That day I was supposed to play Game 4, I woke up on the floor. Couldn’t move, could barely walk.”

He does exercises to manage the back pain and also said he takes daily steps to improve his mental health.

“That’s just working on yourself and I feel like everybody has dark days, but when you’re able to address it and you’re able to work toward a place to where you need to be, that’s where I am,” Simmons said.