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A month ago, when the Nets were 11-4
it all seemed so easy. The transition to Brooklyn had gone nicely, they had
beaten the Knicks, seen Brooke Lopez at his healthy best and gotten off to that
start despite severe shooting struggles from the two guys who, on paper at
least, were their two best players Deron Williams and Joe Johnson.
Fast forward to yesterday when Avery
Johnson has been asked to take his Coach of the Month award home with him. The
Knicks have established themselves as clear favorites along with the Heat in
the Eastern Conference. The Nets are
3-10 since the start, and Williams decided he's better in the system he left in
Utah; a system taught and used by a coach many feel he forced out.
Now a coach familiar to New York
area basketball fans, P.J. Carlesimo becomes interim coach. Carlesimo lead
Seton Hall to the 1989 NCAA championship game and an overtime loss to Michigan
with a cast of players that featured local stars Darryl Walker (All Hallows)
Gerald Greene (Westinghouse) and John Morton (Walton High) from New York along
with Jersey natives Franz Volcy (Seton Hall Prep) and Anthony Avent (Shabazz
High) One internet report says a new
coach will be named shortly while others suggest that even Prokorov will have
to wait till next season to get the high profile guy he wants. Speculation has
ranged from the zen master Phil Jackson to former Indiana University coach
Kelvin Sampson who was successful at three college coaching stints but found
his way to the NBA ranks of assistant coaches as the NCAA posse bore down on
him.
Surely there's more to this than the
notion that Johnson, "was not reaching them" as Billy King suggests. But I wonder if the tune out began
on December 21 when following a loss to the Lakers Johnson held out Gerald
Wallace to avoid playing him in back to back games. The Nets lost a game they
felt they should win and even though their extended streak began a bit later
and was triggered in large part to the absence of Lopez, the Nets were not an
are not a team that can compromise themselves even in games they're "supposed
to win". That may have been one factor that lead to Johnson's demise, and
the burying of last year's first round pick Marshon Brooks may have been
another. Say what you will about Brooks' defense, the Nets need his scoring
punch and creativity as part of their rotation. And he had reached a point
where he was held out of most games and when he did play his confidence was
clearly shaken. And a scorer without confidence is, if I may coin a Brooklyn
metaphor, like an egg cream without Fox's Ubet, completely useless. The two
losses to Golden State and the loss to Milwaukee that sealed Johnson's fate
exposed the Nets' two biggest weaknesses,
quickness and length
The guy who delivered the news of
Johnson's firing, GM Billy King is not blameless in the Nets' struggles. Sure
the big moves; the trades for Williams and Wallace, and Johnson still appear
solid even as the team struggles to find chemistry. resigning Lopez after a
deal for Dwight Howard failed to materialize was the right move, and the amnesty
signing of Andray Blatche has proven to be perhaps the Nets' best move even
though it now remains to be seen whether he will continue to be productive in
Johnson's absence.
But while the roster has talent
there's a terrible lack of depth that's exacerbated when Brooks doesn't figure
in the rotation. Right now, Merza Teletovic looks like a guy who has neither
the desire or athleticism to compete for rebounds at the NBA level. Toko
Shengelia plays with loads of energy but in hindsight perhaps should have been
stashed in Europe because his best chance at NBA success appears to be as a
skilled power forward rather than a long "3 man" he needs to bulk up
for that conversion. Can Brooks' confidence be restored by a new coach. Can
Taylor become a rotation player and improve the team's perimeter quickness. Time will tell if those players are
given a chance and can help put the team back on track. A season that began
with such promise is now full of the kind of intrigue no team wants and no
successful team has. Hopefully for the new team and their fans they can emerge
from it stronger and better than before.
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