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Nets Look To Kidd For Another Culture Change

June 13, 2013  ·  12:15PM

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SAN ANTONIO – The Brooklyn Nets have a great culture outside their arena. Inside their locker room, not so much.

The Nets have talent, starting with three guys — Deron Williams, Joe Johnson and Brook Lopez — you can run an offense through. That’s three more than a lot of teams in this league have. But their first-round defeat at the hands of the Chicago Bulls made it clear that the Nets lack the character, the drive and the cohesiveness to make the most of that talent.

Enter Jason Kidd, a New York Knicks point guard as of two weeks ago and the Nets’ new coach as of Wednesday evening. There are plenty of questions about such a quick, player-to-coach transition, but Kidd may be just what the Nets need.

There have been three trades over the last 15 seasons that have truly changed the culture of a franchise — moves that not only made a team better at basketball, but made its locker room a completely different environment.

A year and a half ago, the Clippers’ acquired Chris Paul and not only became the best team in L.A., but also a group that finally had it’s head on straight. In 2007, the Boston Celtics traded for Kevin Garnett, who turned them into defensive force and a championship contender.

And in 2001, the New Jersey Nets traded Stephon Marbury for Kidd, who changed them from “Clippers East” to the best team in the East. The future Hall of Famer led them to two straight Finals and six straight playoff appearances. In their 37 years in the NBA, the Nets have reached the conference semifinals just six times. Five of those trips took place in Kidd’s six full seasons with the team.

Kidd obviously played a big role, both on the floor and in the locker room, when the Dallas Mavericks won their only championship in 2011. And his influence on Carmelo Anthony and the Knicks this season was clear to most observers. He has a brilliant basketball mind and the respect of the greatest players in the world, having mentored a lot of them – including Williams – at the 2008 Olympics.

But mentoring players as a teammate and leading them as a coach are two different things. And with the rise of analytics, defenses designed to take away a team’s top options, and offenses that use misdirection to get defenses off balance, coaching in the NBA has never been more complicated.

Kidd will have to learn how to run a practice, put together a game plan, make adjustments on the fly, figure out the best role for every guy on the roster, develop an offense that works for three very different 20-point scorers, and put together a defense that the Nets can rely on when the shots aren’t falling.

That makes Kidd’s staff a critical part of his success or failure. He has pushed for former Nets and Pistons coach Lawrence Frank to be his top assistant, a hire that’s not done yet.

Frank led the Nets to within a few possessions of knocking off the eventual champion Pistons after he took over for Byron Scott in 2004. And in his first two full seasons as the coach, the Nets ranked in the top 10 defensively. But as the roster was stripped of its talent, the Nets regressed on defense.

In 2010-11, Frank was the lead assistant in Boston when they ranked No. 2 defensively, but wasn’t given much to work with in his two seasons in Detroit. While the Nets have three go-to guys offensively, they have plenty of questions on the other end of the floor, where they ranked 19th this season and where they got embarrassed by an undermanned Bulls team in Game 7.

Improved defense starts with buy-in from every guy in the roster. And Kidd’s history as a mentor to the likes of Williams, Anthony and LeBron James indicates that players will buy what he’s selling. In the Nets press release announcing the hire, Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov said that Kidd has “the fire in the belly we need,” making it clear what the team’s priorities were when it sought a new coach.

When you’re looking to change the culture, you call on the guy who did it before.

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Hawks Will Rebuild From Scratch

May 4, 2013  ·  4:12PM





HANG TIME HEADQUARTERS – The locals will talk about it forever.

What would the Hawks have been like with Chris Paul or Deron Williams instead of Marvin Williams? Or Rudy Gay or Brandon Roy instead of Shelden Williams or basically anyone other than Speedy Claxton?

Conference finals appearances instead of first round exits? Global recognition of a basketball brand reborn with superstar talent instead of a league laughingstock (after a 13-win season in 2004-05) and the team that can always be counted on not to come through when they should?

Hypothetical questions with no clear-cut answers make the Hawks’ past every bit as murky as their immediate future. They enter free agency this summer with only six players under contract, four Draft picks (two in each round) and approximately $33.1 million in cap space for their GM, Danny Ferry, to work with in rebuilding the roster.

The Hawks choices in the Draft and free agency have come to define the franchise over the past eight years more so than anything they have actually done on the court. They ended an eight-year playoff drought after the 2007-08 season with a core group of Joe Johnson, Josh Smith, Al Horford, Mike Bibby, Josh Childress, Marvin Williams, Zaza Pachulia, Shelden Williams and Acie Law. That group kicked off a run of six straight playoff appearance that came crashing to an ugly end Friday night at Philips Arena in a Game 6 loss to the Indiana Pacers in their first round series.

It was the official end to not only their season but also an era for the Hawks, who have just three players — Horford, Lou Williams and rookie John Jenkins – under guaranteed contacts for next season. Even Hawks coach Larry Drew, who has been on staff (the last three as head coach) throughout this entire era, does not have a contract for next season.

We’ve seen the last of these Hawks as we know them, Drew acknowledged as much after the Game 6 loss.

“Even with the injuries to Zaza and Lou, we were able to juggle some things around, move people around,” Drew said. “And we stayed together. We did not fragment. We stayed together even when it got tough. A lot of people didn’t predict us to make the playoffs. No one gave us a chance, but this group hung in there. They persevered and I’m really proud of them.”

It was an honorable finish to a tumultuous season for all involved. A team loaded with three times as many pending free agents as players under guaranteed contracts, has issues that go above and beyond the professionalism required to do the job under those circumstances.

That said, Ferry is sticking to his plan. He’s going to be rebuilding basically from scratch, with nine players heading into free agency July 1.

Smith, one of the only remaining building blocks from the franchise’s last rebuild and a long-time source of division within the franchise (some folks loved the hometown kid who flashed signs of being an All-Star caliber player over the years while others loathed the enigmatic performer who clashed with his coaches and drove fans nuts with his play), going into the summer as one of the marquee names on the market.

It’s time for Smith and the Hawks to go their separate ways, amicably, of course. Everyone involved knows that it’s time for a mutual parting of the ways for the good of all involved.

Point guard Jeff Teague is a restricted free agent and while he’s shown loads of improvement since Drew took over for Woodson, there remain questions about whether or not he is best suited as the starting point guard for this team.

Ferry can make a clean break from the Hawks’ recent past, from all of the second-guessing, head-scratching and eye-rolling that has surrounded the Hawks for years. No one will vilify him for cleaning up the mess made before he arrived last summer, the one he started clean up himself by moving both Johnson and Marvin Williams in trades last summer.

It’s the uncertainty of what’s to come, however, that makes skeptical Hawks fans nervous. There will be big fish on the free agent market, guys like Los Angeles Lakers’ big man and Atlanta native Dwight Howard and the Los Angeles Clippers’ Paul, stars capable of turning an uncertain situation around by signing their names on the dotted line.

The Hawks have the necessary resources to pursue those two, who will be first and second, in whatever order, on every free agent wish list of a team with money to spend this summer.

The summer of 2013 is the Hawks’ biggest since the summer of 2005, when Johnson (sign-and-trade) and Marvin Williams (No. 2 pick overall in the Draft) were added to the mix. That was the beginning of a painstaking rebuilding process that ultimately led to six straight playoff appearances, the second-best stretch of its kind in the Hawks’ Atlanta history.

For a franchise that has endured a recent stretch of complete insignificance during that playoff drought, followed by the past six postseason runs, a return to the non-playoff abyss is a bit frightening.

That’s what made the end of Friday night so bittersweet for Horford, who has only known the playoffs during his time with the Hawks and in the league.

“I feel for our fans,” he said. “I know they wanted us to do better. I felt like, as a team, we did about as much as we could. We had some adversity and we handled it well. We had a good season, looking at the big picture. One thing I appreciate about these guys was how they competed. Even tonight, we could’ve gone the other way. That is something I’m proud of the guys for.”

The “guys” will look a lot different next season.

In fact, Horford might be one of the only truly familiar faces around if Ferry carries out his master plan.

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Nets Have Much On The Line In Game 7

May 4, 2013  ·  11:05AM

BROOKLYN – After a brutal loss in Game 4 of their first-round series with the Chicago Bulls, the Brooklyn Nets have fought their way back and earned a Game 7 on their home floor on Saturday (8 p.m. ET, TNT).

Game 7s are always huge for both teams, but these 48 minutes will absolutely define the Nets’ season. It will be the difference between accomplishment and disappointment.

The guys Tom Thibodeau puts on the floor will fight for every possession, but the Bulls basically punted this season with the moves they made (or didn’t make) last summer. Their star player hasn’t played a single minute and four more key players are far less than 100 percent. If they lose, we understand that they were undermanned and they retool for next season. They’ve already established a culture of defense, toughness and resilience, which will be there as long as Thibodeau is on the bench.

The Nets, however, haven’t established anything other than a willingness to spend money. There’s a lot of culture outside the Barclays Center, but not necessarily in the locker room.

But if the Nets win Game 7, they’ve at least established themselves as a top-four team in the Eastern Conference and put themselves in a conference semifinals matchup with the juggernaut Miami Heat, where no one will expect them to win more than a game. They will have proven that they too have some resilience, becoming only the ninth team in NBA history to come back from a 3-1 deficit.

If the Nets lose, what are they? They’re a team that didn’t come close to making the most of their talent and lost to a depleted team held together by gauze tape.

Derrick Rose and Luol Deng are not playing. Kirk Hinrich probably isn’t playing either. Joakim Noah and Taj Gibson are banged up and Nate Robinson was throwing up on the bench on Thursday. No, the Nets aren’t 100 percent, but their issues are nothing compared to those of Chicago’s M.A.S.H unit.

So Game 7 is truly a referendum on all things Nets. Here’s who has a lot on the line Saturday:

Billy King: The Nets general manager got his contract extension, but still has a lot of work to do if he wants to turn this team into a true contender. Brooklyn was the league’s most improved team this season, because King spent a lot of Mikhail Prokhorov‘s money.

But $139 million of that money is going to Gerald Wallace and Joe Johnson, who are both on the wrong side of 30 and who both had disappointing seasons. There’s spending money, and there’s spending money wisely.

A playoff victory doesn’t necessarily validate the trades that brought Johnson and Wallace here, but the Nets aren’t necessarily done putting this team together either. A series win is something to build on and maybe something to help convince veteran free agents (and/or a great coach) that this is the place to be.

The Nets’ defense: The Bulls are a pretty bad offensive team. They ranked 24th on that end of the floor in the regular season, and that was with some of their players healthier than they are now. But they’ve been able to hang with the Nets in this series, in part because the Brooklyn defense has been rather porous, especially when trying to stop Chicago’s pick-and-roll attack.

Chicago basically has two guys who can beat you: Carlos Boozer and Robinson. And Robinson is just as likely to shoot the Bulls out of a game as he is to shoot them into one. If the Nets can’t stop these guys, they’ve got a lot of ‘splaining to do.

Deron Williams: Williams has silenced his critics, playing much better over the last 2 1/2 months and making it clear that his early-season struggles were injury-related. But if he’s truly back to being an elite point guard, he has to prove it on Saturday. He has got to be aggressive offensively, get his team to move the ball, and put it on himself to stay in front of Robinson defensively.

Talent has never been a question with Williams. Leadership, however, has. To win a Game 7 against a resilient opponent, the Nets will need a leader on the floor.

Brook Lopez: Returning from two foot injuries suffered last season, Lopez has established himself as an All-Star and the best offensive center in the league. Just as important, he has taken a step forward defensively.

Lopez has been the best player in this series, but has struggled in the second half of some of these games. He has shot 8-for-24 in the third quarter, in which the Nets have struggled most of the series (and most of the season too).

In fact, in the second half of 10 total games against the Bulls this season, Lopez has shot just 28-for-70 (40 percent). The final regular season meeting ended with Lopez turning the ball over, getting blocked by Nazr Mohammed, and missing a jumper to tie at the buzzer, allowing the Bulls to escape with a two-point victory.

It’s one thing to be an All-Star. It’s another to be a guy your team can count on to get you big buckets in a do-or-die situation. And even before we get to the closing moments of Game 7, Lopez’s pick-and-roll defense will also be in the spotlight.

P.J. Carlesimo: It seems like a foregone conclusion that the Nets’ interim coach won’t be asked to return this summer, and he probably won’t receive much credit if the Nets win this series. But he’ll clearly get much of the blame if they lose, because it’s supposed to be the coach’s job to make the most of his team’s talent.

This team hasn’t done that. The offense has been inconsistent and the defense has been mediocre, at best. Reserves MarShon Brooks and Mirza Teletovic, who could possibly have contributed more (and helped space the floor), failed to develop.

Carlesimo wasn’t put in an easy position, of course. He was handed a team that had lost 10 of its last 13 games in late December. He deserves credit for righting the ship and getting the Nets’ best players playing better. That probably won’t save his job though.

In this series, Carlesimo has been slow to adjust. His starting lineup has struggled offensively, but has played the most minutes (119) of any lineup in the postseason (no other Nets lineup has played more than 13 minutes). He has navigated his team through two elimination-game victories, but has one more to go and can’t let a bad lineup stay on the floor for too long.

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Nets Do It All Offensively To Stay Alive

April 30, 2013  ·  12:15AM

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BROOKLYN – When you score 110 points in a slow-paced playoff game against a top-five defense, you’re doing a lot of things right. And the Brooklyn Nets did a lot right in their 110-91 victory over the Chicago Bulls on Monday, avoiding elimination and sending this first round series back to Chicago for Game 6 on Thursday (8 p.m. ET, TNT).

There are four factors when it comes to scoring efficiency: Shooting from the field, turnovers, free throws, and offensive rebounds.

The Nets shot 50 percent from the field and 6-for-17 from 3-point range. Check.

The Nets committed just 11 turnovers, zero in the fourth quarter. Check.

The Nets got to the line 23 times and connected on 20 of the 23 attempts. Check.

The Nets grabbed 17 offensive rebounds and turned them into 24 second-chance points. Check.

All those checks enabled the Nets to survive a gut-check. They rebounded (literally and figuratively) from Saturday’s heartbreaking loss in Game 4, answered some questions about their heart and resilience, and put themselves in position to bring this series back to Brooklyn for Game 7 on Saturday.

And don’t let the final score fool you. The game was very much up for grabs late in the game. After leading by as many as 10 points in the third quarter, the Nets were up just one after Jimmy Butler began the fourth with a 3-pointer. They were still up only five with a little over four minutes to go.

At that point, any observer still had Saturday’s collapse – a 14-point lead gone in less than three minutes – fresh in their mind. But this was a different night, one in which the Bulls couldn’t stop the Nets, who didn’t go more than two straight possessions without a score over the final 32 minutes.

“The difference tonight was that we were able to sustain it for essentially a full 48 minutes,” Brook Lopez said afterward. “We really came together as a team, played through the entire shot clock, and turned our good looks into great looks.”

Brooklyn scored at least 25 points in each quarter and went off for 33 over the final 12 minutes. And they got critical contributions from everywhere.

Deron Williams clearly knew he could take advantage of the absence of Kirk Hinrich and a mismatch with Nate Robinson. He pushed the ball down the floor, got the Nets into their offense early, and took Robinson into the paint, totaling 23 points and 10 assists.

Lopez took advantage of the Bulls’ heavy strong-side defense by flashing from the weak side and attacking the basket. He shot 10-for-14 in the paint and registered 28 points and 10 rebounds.

Andray Blatche was good Andray Blatche on this particular night, mostly staying in control and scoring 10 of his 13 points in the critical fourth quarter. The Lopez-Blatche combo was a plus-14 in eight minutes on Monday and is now a plus-38 for the series.

And the much maligned Gerald Wallace came up huge in the final minutes, opening the game up with a sequence in which he drained a corner three, stole a Nate Robinson pass, and turned it into a breakaway dunk on the other end.

This is who the Nets can be. They ranked ninth in offensive efficiency this season, but have the personnel to be a top-five team on that end of the floor. They have three guys – Williams, Lopez and Joe Johnson – they can run their offense through. With Hinrich out and Joakim Noah still somewhat hindered by plantar fasciitis, they have distinct matchup advantages. And with the Bulls so limited offensively, they have plenty of opportunities to run the floor. They registered 21 fast break points on Monday.

It’s just a matter of energy and execution, keeping the ball and the players moving. If you have the talent, there are ways to beat the Bulls’ defense. The Nets have now played well offensively in three of the five games in this series.

“I believed we would respond,” Nets coach P.J. Carlesimo said. “As disheartening a loss as Saturday was, there have still been enough good minutes in this series.”

Indeed. Though they’re down 3-2, the Nets have now outscored the Bulls by 17 points over the five games. If they can keep that point differential moving in their favor on Thursday, they’ll have a Game 7 on their home floor, and Saturday’s collapse will be long forgotten.

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Time For The Nets To Show Resolve

April 29, 2013  ·  10:22AM

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The Brooklyn Nets aren’t going to out-tough the Chicago Bulls. No team can do that.

Led by Tom Thibodeau, Joakim Noah and Luol Deng, the Bulls are certainly the most resilient team in the league, Exhibit A being Saturday’s comeback from 14 points down with three minutes to go in regulation and the ability to outlast the Nets in three overtimes with Noah, Nate Robinson and Taj Gibson having fouled out.

“That’s been the nature of the team all season,” Thibodeau said Sunday. “They’ll keep battling. Things weren’t going our way, but there was no give-in. They just kept going.”

Now, it’s not like the Nets are pushovers. It takes a certain amount of toughness to build a 14-point lead in a hostile environment when you’re down 2-1 in the series. And the Nets managed to bounce back from blowing that 14-point lead to make some (just not enough) big plays down the stretch. Really, if just one of those crazy Robinson shots didn’t go in, this series would be tied 2-2.

It’s not though. And the Nets are now faced with the challenge of having to win three straight games. If they can’t, we can certainly declare their season a disappointment.

So Brooklyn will have to show more of its own resilience in Game 5 on Monday (7 p.m. ET, TNT). Playing well in the face of elimination is a mental thing, especially in the wake of such a heartbreaking loss.

But the Nets shouldn’t lack confidence going forward. They have put up big numbers against the staunch Chicago defense twice in the series thus far. And though they’re 2-6 against the Bulls this season, they’ve been outscored by just 12 total points over the eight games.

“I don’t think it’s difficult for our guys to feel that they’re capable of doing this,” Nets coach P.J. Carlesimo said. “I think that they feel we can beat the Bulls. Have we done it? No, we haven’t done it enough. But they know that we can do it.”

The Nets have seemingly been a team without character all season. They’re to be praised for taking care of business against bad teams (they were 35-7 against teams that finished below .500) and for compiling the league’s fifth-best road record (23-18). But they’re to be questioned for their 14-26 mark against winning teams and their defense, which wavered ranged from poor to mediocre most of the season.

Maybe that’s just who the Nets are, a good team that can’t hang when the going gets tough. Or maybe they haven’t shown us everything they have.

If the Nets are to show some resolve on Monday, it must manifest itself in execution as much as energy. They can continue to beat the Bulls’ defense if they get into their offense early, keep their stars – Deron Williams, Joe Johnson and Brook Lopez — on the move, and knock down some shots. The absence of Kirk Hinrich — out with a calf injury — should benefit Williams on the perimeter.

Defensively, the Nets need to cut off Robinson in the pick-and-roll and put more pressure on Carlos Boozer at the high post. No other Chicago player has really been able to hurt them and the Bulls have been somewhat fortunate in that they’ve shot so well (54 percent) from mid-range. That number is not sustainable, especially if Brooklyn does a slightly better job of challenging those shots.

It’s all right there for the Nets. Chicago is certainly the tougher team, but not necessarily the better team. Down 3-1, proving that will be difficult, but nothing worthwhile comes easily.

It starts with Game 5.

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Hinrich’s absence (is status beyond Game 5 is unknown) could be a real killer for the Bulls. Here are some numbers that don’t paint a pretty picture for Chicago…

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Nets’ Offensive Sputters Might Require ‘Last-Resort Guy’ Brooks

April 26, 2013  ·  8:20PM

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CHICAGO – MarShon Brooks, the Brooklyn Nets’ second-year shooting guard and deep reserve, was on the floor for the entire fourth quarter of their Game 3 loss to the Chicago Bulls Thursday night at United Center. It wasn’t a bad 12 minutes in what otherwise was a clunker: Down 17 points with 8:35 left, the Nets outscored their hosts 20-6 the rest of the way.

Brooks (two points, two rebounds) was part of that in a stint that coach P.J. Carlesimo said was better than his individual numbers. He even was in the middle of Brooklyn’s last gasp, passing up a 3-pointer contested by Chicago’s Luol Deng to set up C.J. Watson, open in the right corner, for one that missed.

So maybe Brooks – who got more opportunities on a bad Nets teams as a rookie (29.4 mpg, 12.6 ppg) than on this season’s upgraded squad (12.5, 5.4) – could be an “X” factor for a team struggling to score.

“To be thrown into the fourth quarter, that’s probably the most intense part of the game,” the 24-year-old product of Providence said Friday at the team’s hotel. “I would like to play more and if I play more, I feel like I would contribute more. Especially when we have a hard time scoring – that’s kind of what I do.”

To a fault, frequently. Brooks is considered a liability on defense and he can frustrate teammates with his black-hole tendencies. He benefits from “backup quarterback syndrome,” with a segment of Brooklyn fans clamoring for him, wanting increased minutes and scoring chances because he has so much, y’know, potential.

But even Brooks knows that isn’t likely to happen.

“Honestly this year, it is what it is,” he said before the Nets’ video session and meeting. “I’ve been kind of a last-resort guy. If it’s not working for everybody else, that’s when they throw me out there. That’s just the way it’s been. … Down by 10, we need a spark, throw me out there.”

Guess what? The Nets are down by 10 figuratively, trailing in a series 2-1, home-court advantage gone and showing no sustainable offensive breakthroughs. They have shot 34.9 percent in the two losses (21.4 percent from the arc). In a span of 13:45 across the first and second quarters Thursday, Brooklyn took 25 shots, missed 24 and got outscored 28-4.

Sure, Chicago’s halfcourt defense is stifling. That’s a given. It still is on Carlesimo, his staff and the players too to add wrinkles to their attack and iron out ones that don’t belong.

One issue has been the high number of pipefitters and bricklayers on the Brooklyn roster. Reggie Evans, Gerald Wallace, Keith Bogans, Kris Humphries and aging Jerry Stackhouse aren’t exactly lithe offensive thoroughbreds – they’re relative Clydesdales and they have largely been neglected by Bulls defenders, who instead load up on Deron Williams, Joe Johnson and Brook Lopez. Yet those guys, coming free, haven’t made Chicago pay with put-backs and second chances.

“If they are going to load up,” Carlesimo said, “we have to get offensive rebounds and take better care of the ball.”

Anything else? “We can set better screens,” the Brooklyn coach said. “Spacing, too. … When our bail-out spots are what they’re supposed to be, we should be able to move the ball. Because they load so much to the strong side of the floor, there’s usually at least one extra guy there. If you position yourself where you’re supposed to be, there should at least be a pass available.

“When you don’t space it well, when you don’t set solid screens, when you don’t set sides of the floor against them, you don’t score. Against other teams, you can not do those things and still overcome it. You can’t overcome it against a really good defensive team, which they obviously are.”

Carlesimo said he would alter his starting lineup only if Johnson, battling plantar fasciitis in his left foot, were unable to play. But he did say he would go to his bench sooner or tinker with player combinations if points continue to trickle in. Brooklyn can’t simply wait and hope it replicates its offense from the series opener (55.8 percent shooting, 106 points in the Game 1 victory). Too much unpredictability.

“We’re not unique but we’re at times our own worst enemy and at times it’s refreshing,” Carlesimo said, “the fact that there’s not always a correlation between what we’re going to do tomorrow and what we did yesterday.”

That might offer a glimmer of hope even for the last-resort guy.

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Nets Extend King, Who Has More Work To Do

April 26, 2013  ·  5:16PM

BOSTON – The Brooklyn Nets announced Friday that they’ve signed general manager Billy King to a contract extension. NetsDaily reports that the deal is for three years.

The timing is interesting, given how anemic the roster King has assembled has looked in its last two games against the Chicago Bulls. But Brooklyn was the most improved team in the league this season, and in his time with the Nets, King has turned Devin Harris, Anthony Morrow and Travis Outlaw into Deron Williams, Joe Johnson and Gerald Wallace.

Most improved teams, 2011-12 to 2012-13, NetRtg

Team OffRtg Rk DefRtg Rk NetRtg
Brooklyn +5.3 4 -3.4 3 +8.7
Charlotte +6.0 3 +1.2 14 +4.8
Golden State +1.2 16 -3.5 2 +4.6
L.A. Clippers +2.5 12 -2.0 5 +4.5
Oklahoma City +3.0 9 -0.8 9 +3.8

OffRtg = Points scored per 100 possessions
DefRtg = Points allowed per 100 possessions
NetRtg = Point differential per 100 possessions

The problem is that King gave up a Lottery pick for Wallace, who has really regressed this season and is owed over $30 million over the next three years. And he’s the fifth-highest paid player on the team. Given the restrictions of the new collective bargaining agreement, the Nets are mostly stuck with the roster they have, a roster that had no major injuries this season and finished fourth in the weaker conference.

They do hope that they have one card to play: trading Kris Humphries‘ contract (which expires next season) to upgrade one of the forward positions. In one of King’s more interesting moves last summer, Humphries was essentially re-signed to be traded. The Nets didn’t necessarily want to bring the power forward back, but if they let him go, they didn’t have the cap space to replace him with anything but a minimum-salary player. Re-signing Humphries gave them the opportunity to eventually deal him for someone who makes similar money, but they might not have the add-ins (young players with potential or potentially high draft picks) to entice another team to trade them a real difference maker.

A(nother) coaching change could also make a difference. Multiple reports indicate that interim coach P.J. Carlesimo probably won’t be retained at the end of the Nets’ playoff run. Carlesimo has stuck with vanilla lineups despite his team’s struggles against quality opponents, and the Nets could move up a couple of spots both offensively and defensively next season with a little more innovation from the bench.

So while his roster is mostly set, King still has some work to do. He has to try to find a taker for Humphries, and he has to (likely) hire a new coach.

 

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Primer On Plantar Fasciitis, Limping Into Spotlight In Nets-Bulls

April 24, 2013  ·  9:09PM

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DEERFIELD, Ill. – The next time someone casts a dirty look your way for all those couch-and-clicker hours logged catching every possible NBA playoff game from mid-April to mid-June, be sure to point out the educational value contained therein.

Particularly for the budding orthopedists in the audience.

A year ago at this time, sports fans across America learned more than they ever cared to know — at Derrick Rose’s, Iman Shumpert’s and Baron Davis‘ expense — about anterior cruciate knee ligaments and the surgery required to repair them. Two weeks ago, the NBA got a refresher course in Achilles tendons, courtesy of Lakers star Kobe Bryant and his Twitter account.

Now the layman’s medical lesson of the day relates to plantar fasciitis, a condition of the foot that is more fun to say than to spell but really stinks if you’re the one hobbling around with it.

“Plantar fasciitis sucks,” said Bulls center Joakim Noah, who lost games and Defensive Player of the Year votes to the injury during the regular season and is desperate not to lose winning opportunities to it now. In the first two games against Brooklyn in the teams’ first-round playoff series, Noah was ineffective and limited to 13:27 minutes in the opener but came up big in 25:29 of Chicago’s Game 2 victory, including a fourth quarter in which he had nine points and six rebounds in less than eight minutes.

Noah’s condition will be monitored and probably won’t significantly improve until the Bulls’ postseason ends. And now Nets shooting guard Joe Johnson is suffering from his own bout of plantar fasciitis — it kept him out of practice Wednesday, with Game 3 Thursday (8:30 p.m. ET, NBA TV) at Chicago’s United Center.

“It feels like you have needles underneath your foot while you’re playing,” Noah said, trying to explain the pain. “You need to jump, you need to run, you need to do a lot of things while you’re playing basketball, so you don’t want needles underneath your foot, right?” (more…)

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Have We Seen The Best Of The Nets?

April 5, 2013  ·  11:58AM

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BROOKLYN – The Brooklyn Nets gave one away on Thursday, blowing an early 16-point lead and falling to the very undermanned Chicago Bulls, 92-90. Ultimately, the loss may not mean anything, because the Nets still have a 1 1/2 game lead on the Bulls for fourth place in the Eastern Conference and face Lottery teams, against whom they’re 29-6 this season, in five of their last seven games.

A fourth-place finish in the East would give the Nets home-court advantage in first round, likely against Atlanta or Chicago. A loss in that series would be a disappointment, especially when you consider Brooklyn’s payroll. A win would set them up to lose in four or five games to the Miami Heat.

Other than losing in the first round, there’s no avoiding that fate, which has basically been the path the Nets have been on for the last couple of weeks, since the Knicks and Pacers started playing well again.

I wrote about this yesterday. And maybe this is just who the Nets are. Maybe they’re just a good, but not great, basketball team.

But it’s hard not to wonder if we’ve ever really seen the best of the Nets this season. They currently rank ninth in offensive efficiency and 19th defensively. They could and, really, should be better.

Injuries have been an issue. Deron Williams has missed just three games this season, but was clearly not at his best for the first 50 games, dealing with sore ankles and other various ailments. He’s been much better since the All-Star break, but Joe Johnson has had a couple of different injuries since then. Brook Lopez‘s foot injury in late November is what really knocked the Nets off track after a strong start. And Gerald Wallace, in standard Gerald Wallace fashion, has been banged up too.

The Nets have looked like a great team at times. They have road wins in Boston, Oklahoma City, New York and Indiana. But, other than a 12-2 stretch after P.J. Carlesimo took over for Avery Johnson, success has always been rather fleeting.

Carlesimo made some minor changes, gave Mirza Teletovic a shot in the rotation after the break, and is now giving MarShon Brooks more consistent playing time than he’s had all season. But he has been pretty vanilla with his lineups, and that’s where the Nets may be leaving something on the table.

Of Lopez’s 2,079 minutes on the floor, 1,639 (79 percent) have been played with either Reggie Evans or Kris Humphries at power forward. Neither Evans nor Humphries, of course, spaces the floor very well.

Teletovic is very different from Evans or Humphries, in that he can shoot from beyond five feet. But he has played just 112 minutes at the four next to Lopez.

Andray Blatche has also shot the ball well out to 19 feet or so. But he has played just 86 minutes with Lopez. The Nets’ five best players are arguably Williams, Johnson, Wallace, Blatche and Lopez, a group that has played just 20 minutes together over four games this season.

One of the best lineups the Nets have had this season is a small one. Williams, Keith Bogans, Johnson, Wallace and Lopez have outscored their opponents by 18.3 points per 100 possessions in 107 minutes together. Now, those numbers are skewed somewhat by a couple of late-December games against the Bobcats and Cavs, but that lineup has played just seven minutes together since the All-Star break.

In total, Lopez has played just 242 minutes with someone other than Blatche, Evans, Humphries or Teletovic at power forward. And those minutes have been very good, especially defensively.

Nets efficiency with Brook Lopez on the floor

Power forward MIN OffRtg DefRtg NetRtg +/-
Reggie Evans 1,125 105.6 103.2 +2.4 +69
Kris Humphries 514 106.1 105.1 +1.0 +14
Mirza Teletovic 112 115.8 110.4 +5.3 +19
Andray Blatche 86 104.8 100.3 +4.6 +17
Other (small lineups) 242 106.3 99.2 +7.1 +72
TOTAL 2,079 106.4 103.5 +2.9 +191

OffRtg = Points scored per 100 possessions
DefRtg = Points allowed per 100 possessions
NetRtg = Point differential per 100 possessions

When asked about his lineups, Carlesimo has said that he goes with matchups. But he has obviously been leaning heavily on Evans of late, even using him on two crucial offensive possessions in the final minute of Thursday’s loss, thinking Evans might get the Nets a second chance with an offensive rebound.

The Nets have actually been better offensively with Evans on the floor (scoring 105.4 points per 100 possessions) than with him off the floor (103.8), but most of those off-floor minutes have come with Humphries, similarly limited offensively, at power forward.

This is why it’s hard to know if we’ve seen the best of the Nets this season. Those 242 minutes of small-ball aren’t a lot to go on. And neither are the 86 minutes Lopez has played with Blatche.

Lopez is Brooklyn’s most important player on both ends of the floor. And in the playoffs, his minutes should surely increase from the 30.7 per game he’s played in the regular season. Does that mean that Blatche will be limited to just 10-12 minutes, or will we actually see the two on the floor together? Is there a matchup (Josh Smith, perhaps) that will allow Carlesimo to play Wallace at the four?

In four games against Atlanta (all under Carlesimo), the Nets have played small a total of seven minutes. So the answer to that last question is probably “no.”

Now, it’s unfair to really condemn the coach for not taking more chances with his rotation. He took over in the middle of the season, with the Nets going through a serious rough patch. More than anything, they just needed to get their best players playing well. And obviously, Lopez and Williams are doing just that.

Still, we have to wonder if this team has reached its potential.

***

John Schuhmann is a staff writer for NBA.com. Send him an e-mail or follow him on twitter.

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Injuries Loom As Teams Make Playoff Push

April 2, 2013  ·  11:53AM

HANG TIME SOUTHWEST – Oklahoma City, Memphis and Miami, feel fortunate, very fortunate, and proceed with caution.

As the regular season churns down to a handful of games over these final 16 days, the three teams above are the only ones of the 16 current playoff teams, plus the desperately-trying-to-get-in Los Angeles Lakers, currently unaffected by injury — or injuries.

Playoff seeding, and ultimately playoff series, could tilt on an injury report that seems to grow with each passing game.

The Grizzlies caught a break with the quick return of center Marc Gasol from an abdomen injury. Initially the team listed him as out “indefinitely.” Later, Gasol said he’d be back for the playoffs. Next thing you know he’s back after missing just two games and right back on his game.

The Heat missed Dwyane Wade for a couple games during their win streak and, of course, he, LeBron James and Mario Chalmers came down with those, ahem, previously unreported injuries prior to Sunday’s game at San Antonio. Speaking of the Spurs, Manu Ginobili‘s most recent ill-timed injury (hamstring) has put the Western Conference’s No. 1 seed firmly in play Thursday night when San Antonio visits a Thunder team as healthy as any can be 70-something games in.

Few are so fortunate, and let’s start with the carousel of injuries that have beset the Lakers. Kobe Bryant continues to play through a sprained ankle and whatever else, Dwight Howard still deals with the sporadic shooting pain from the torn labrum in his shoulder and Pau Gasol is finally back. But Metta World Peace (knee) won’t be back and Steve Nash (hip) is “doubtful” for tonight’s big showdown against the never-say-die Dallas Mavericks (10:30 p.m. ET, TNT).

The Lakers won’t receive sympathy cards from Denver, which could be without spark plug point guard Ty Lawson (heel) until the playoffs. As soon as Chauncey Billups (groin) finally returned he was gone again, and couldn’t the sinking Clippers use him right about now?

Houston’s All-Star James Harden can’t seem to shake a sprained right ankle. Jazz reserve big man Enes Kanter (shoulder), whose March was his biggest month of the season, is out indefinitely. Golden State is essentially healthy, having lost Brandon Rush way back in the opening days of the season.

Over in the Eastern Conference, the Boston Celtics, New York Knicks and Chicago Bulls shake their heads at any team ruffled by a single injury, or two. The Celtics, having adjusted to life without Rajon Rondo, plus rookie Jared Sullinger are without Kevin Garnett (ankle) and Paul Pierce missed Monday’s loss at Minnesota for “personal reasons,” according to coach Doc Rivers. Meanwhile, Boston is dangerously close to slipping into eighth place and a first-round matchup against the Heat.

In the Big Apple, the injury list goes on and on: Tyson Chandler (neck) remains wait-and-see, Amar’e Stoudemire (knee) and Kurt Thomas (foot), very likely could join Rasheed Wallace (foot) as being shut down for the season. The Knicks, busting through it all with an eight-game win streak, continue to battle for the No. 2 seed with the Indiana Pacers, who have five straight and learned last week that Danny Granger (knee) won’t be making the late-season comeback they had expected just days earlier.

And those scrappy, scrappy Bulls by now must be resigned to a full season without Derrick Rose (knee), and they may have lost Rip Hamilton (back) for the season. They hope to soon get center Joakim Noah (foot) back in uniform, as well as Marco Belinelli (abdomen).

Meanwhile, the Brooklyn Nets, finally with Deron Williams healthy and playing like an All-Star again, would love to say the same about Joe Johnson (heel).

As the playoffs quickly approach, time is running short for players and teams to get healthy.

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