Nets face crisis point in once-promising Brooklyn premiere season
Joe Bianca
For the first time since 2006, the Nets are going to have a winning record at the All-Star break. They have a slick new stadium in the commercial epicenter of Brooklyn that regularly sells out and has drawn the 7th-most fans in the NBA this season. Compared to the last several years of dreadful teams playing in front of empty houses in East Rutherford and Newark, including the 12-70 crater of a season in 2009-10, the championship-less franchise appears to be in a good place.
But the inaugural season in Brooklyn has been a frustrating one full of starts and stops for fans who were sold the idea that the team would resemble a finished product when it moved into the Barclays Center this past offseason, ready to contend with the powers in the Eastern Conference. The Nets got off to an auspicious beginning under head coach Avery Johnson, starting the season with an 11-4 stretch that included a seismic overtime victory over the crosstown rival Knicks. Then they dropped 10 of their next 13 games, including two losses to their Manhattan nemeses. It was enough to get Johnson fired just weeks after being named Eastern Conference coach of the month.
Under interim coach P.J. Carlesimo, the Nets thrived initially, going 12-2 to run their record to 26-16 and put a real scare into the top seeds in the East for the first time. Then came a pair of humbling road losses to the Grizzlies and Rockets and, sandwiched around a win over the lowly Magic, a disastrous 3rd quarter at home against the Heat, the conference’s standard-bearer. In front of owner Mikhail Prokhorov and a national audience, Brooklyn was blown away by the defending champions 36-14 in the penultimate period. It was a thoroughly embarrassing performance, an apparent exposition of a franchise that had made some progress, but was still not close to a point where it could contend seriously.
The Nets haven’t looked the same since that 3rd quarter and are now reeling from three disastrous losses in their past four games. First, they couldn’t close out another national television game against a mediocre Lakers team that was missing Dwight Howard, Pau Gasol and Metta World Peace in crunch time. After an uninspired 3-point win over the 18-31 Pistons, the Nets were humiliated by the 13-35 Wizards and turned a 6-point halftime lead against the Spurs into a 25-point home loss, once again on national television.
In fact, chances are the only highlight you saw from any of those games was the Lakers’ Kobe Bryant and his 34-year-old body dunking in the faces of both Gerald Wallace and Kris Humphries, two guys the Nets are paying a total of $21,682,345 this season to average a combined 14.8 points per game.
The reputation of the Brooklyn Nets is rapidly becoming one the still skeptical borough won’t stand for: a soft team of overpaid, underachieving players and clueless coaches. Deron Williams accepted a max contract from the team in the offseason and has responded by posting his lowest Player Efficiency Rating since 2006-07, his second season in the NBA. Joe Johnson, already notorious as one of the most overpaid players in the league, is putting up his worst PER since 2003-04. Wallace’s PER is his lowest since he became a starter in 2003-04. Kris Humphries? Lowest since 2006-07.
When this many key contributors are playing this far below their expected output, the effectiveness of the coaching staff has to be called into question. But due to his hasty axing of Johnson, Prokhorov has painted himself into a corner. Even if he knows Carlesimo isn’t the guy, Prokhorov can’t discard his second coach of the season without risking putting off high-profile coaching candidates to whom job security will be paramount. Other coaches already made it clear that they didn’t approve of Johnson’s dismissal by stubbornly and politically refusing to put clearly deserving Nets center Brook Lopez on the East’s All-Star team.
Lopez has been the team’s one unimpeded bright spot during this tumultuous opening season in Brooklyn. Going into Monday’s game, Lopez was the fourth-most efficient player in the NBA, returning from missing almost all of 2011-12 with what is so far his best season. Lopez is only 24 years old and is signed through 2014-15 at a reasonable salary considering he’s one of very few dominant centers in the league. The Nets look smart for not trading him to Orlando to get Howard last season.
As well as Lopez has played, a lone All-Star is not going to cut it for a franchise with the second-highest payroll in the NBA, one that has more guaranteed money on its books through 2015-16 than any other team by a wide margin. The Nets will have little to no cap room for the foreseeable future and have only three (likely low) first-round picks in the next three drafts. A recent trade rumor sending the Hawks’ Josh Smith to Brooklyn for Humphries, MarShon Brooks and possibly a first-round pick would improve the team marginally, if at all.
This is a critical season, one in which the Nets desperately need to establish a foothold in New York City and lock up the support of a borough that has been craving professional sports since the Dodgers left in 1957 but also houses generations of Knick fans uneasy about switching allegiances. Though attendance has been strong at the Barclays Center, some recent home games — particularly against the Heat and Lakers — have had a discouraging percentage of opposing fans.
Prokhorov chose to come into New York guns blazing, putting up billboards across from Madison Square Garden and letting general manager Billy King go on a spending spree last year. So far, all he has to show for it is an underachieving roster, a lame duck coach, a brutal salary cap situation and a Manhattan neighbor poised to make a deep playoff run. In this city, he’s going to have to do a lot better than that.
Running the Point 