Nets Are Scorching

The last time the Nets played the Nuggets, they were without Devin Harris and they still hung tough with them for about a half.  Let’s see if the return of Harris and Lee (who is coming off the bench along with Devin), can give the Nets enough firepower to get some things done on the offensive end.  Brook Lopez is in the lineup today after spraining his ankle yesterday.

Another thing to look for is to see if the Nets defense comes back around.  For like 6 or 7 games the Nets played really well, but everything broke down against the Nets.  Let’s see if it was just the Knicks style or if there is something more to it.  Here are the lineups:

Chauncey Billups vs. Rafer Alston:

Chauncey is such a physical point guard he is going to have his way with Skip.  You beat Chauncey by out-quicking him, and Rafer doesn’t have that type of speed anymore.  If Devin was starting, I would call this a push, but he is coming off the bench.

Advantage:  Chauncey Billups

J.R. Smith  vs. Chris Douglas-Roberts

You can call him Earl, I am still going to call him J.R.  Smith is a great shooter, so CDR is going to have to stick with him.  I have really loved CDR’s defense of late, and he seems to be the Nets most consistent player when he is out there.

Advantage:  Chris Douglas-Roberts

Carmelo Anthony vs. Trenton Hassell

I talked about Carmelo at length earlier.  He is probably the best SF in the post, but what makes him so tough is that he is just as good 30 feet from the basket.  He can do  everything.  Pass, shoot, drive, and when he wants to he plays defense.  After LeBron, I think Carmelo is the league’s most complete player.  Hassell is going to play him tough no question, but Carmelo is going to be too much for him.

Advantage:  Carmelo Anthony

Kenyon Martin vs. Josh Boone

Kenyon Martin is making news because he has been saying that Bruce Ratner is the reason that the Nets are as bad as they are.  Kenyon, it has been a few years, let it go.  Also, reporters need to stop bringing this up too.  I know that he was a popular guy here, but you don’t have to talk to him about the trade every single time the Nuggets play the Nets.  It is starting to get old.  Oh and Kenyon is going to work Josh Boone tonight.

Advantage:  Kenyon Martin

Nene vs. Brook Lopez

Brook Lopez took one 14 foot jumper against New York.  That makes me feel so much better.  It is interesting to see how the return of Devin Harris gets Brook back into the paint.  Let’s see if it continues against Nene, who is a very physical presence down low.  I think it can.

Advantage:  Brook Lopez

Keys To The Game

Limit Runs:

This Nuggets team is very streaky, they go on big runs a lot.  If you can keep them from going on multiple double digit runs, you can keep this team close.

Take Advantage Of The Nuggets’ Lulls:

The problem with a streaky team is that they aren’t always hot.  They tend to run cold as well (The Clippers went on a 19-0 run on them).  The Nets need to take advantage of this and cut into the Nuggets lead or extend their own when this happens.

Prediction

Current Record = 7-6

Nuggets Win.  Nets will keep it close for 3 quarters though.  Oh and I am going to be over at the Daily Dime tonight, so check it out.

With the start of the season Mark and I have been really focused on the games, so focused in fact, that there has been little attention paid to some of the off-the-court stuff happening with the Nets.  Today, however, something happened that can’t really be ignored.  In a 6-1 decision, the New York Court of Appeals has turned down critics’ arguments that the state’s Empire State Development Corp. violated New York’s constitution in pursuing eminent domain to acquire land for Atlantic Yards, including Barclays Center.  According to the New York Times:

The last major obstacle to a groundbreaking for the $4.9 billionAtlantic Yards development in Brooklyn fell Tuesday when New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, dismissed a challenge to the state’s use of eminent domain on behalf of the developer, Bruce C. Ratner.

With the Mikhail Prokhorov ownership bid looking more and more like a possibility as each day passes, and now this decision, Brooklyn is more of a reality as it has ever been.  As a result, the Jersey kid in me is a little sad, but the Nets fan in me is really pumped for this.  Everyone likes to talk about this free-agency class and no matter how ridiculous it may sound, the allure of Brooklyn has the chance to draw more players than the allure of the Izod Center or the Prudential Center.  So what’s the next step?  Well, Ratner plans to start selling tax-free bonds next month.  In the comments of his NetsDaily post, NetIncome talks about it:

The bonds will be authorized this morning by the Brooklyn Arena Land Development Corp., a state agency. The authorization will include details on the interest rate (the Nets did get investment grade on most but not all of the bonds), how much needs to be sold (not quite $700 million), and what will be covered (infrastructure beyond the arena).

They will then be marketed. How tough of a sell? A lot less tough than it was before this ruling.

Prokhorov will have to be approved by the NBA board of governors in the next few weeks. Stern has said the NBA understands that the arena deal cannot close without the NBA approval of Prokhorov as principal owner.

Even though it might look like the Nets and Ratner are crossing the finish line, there is a least one organization still fighting them.  That’s right, Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn.  From a press release they have sent out:

The fight against the Atlantic Yards project is far from over. The community has four outstanding lawsuits against the project and, meanwhile, the arena bond financing clock ticks louder and louder for Ratner. While this is a terrible day for taxpaying homeowners in New York, this is not the end of our fight to keep the government from stealing our homes and businesses, Governor Paterson and Mayor Bloomberg now need to decide if they want their legacy to be the next New London—a dust bowl in the heart of Brooklyn caused by the abuse of eminent domain, because that will be the outcome if they allow the property seizures and final clearance for Ratner’s unfeasible project.

If all goes according to plan though, the developer expects that construction of the arena will take about 28 months, enabling the Nets to move from East Rutherford, N.J., to Brooklyn about June 2012.

So the Knicks game was a big disappointment.  This was the Nets final chance to get a win before a brutal west coast swing and most likely a new record in futility.  The Nets scored 91 points, and while some of that had to do with the return of Devin Harris, it also was because the Nets’ played right into the Knicks’ hands.  They were flying up and down the court, taking quick shots, and playing little defense.  That final point is what disappointed me the most.  The Nets have been playing great defense as of late, and they really took a step back on Saturday, especially when defending the 3.  They allowed the Knicks to shoot above their season total from the 3 point line (31% on the year/35% in the game).  A lot of it had to do with poor rotation, resulting in wide open 3s.  Here we are going to take a look at 2 wide open threes the Knicks got, netting them 6 points (Big points when you realize the Nets lost by 7).

Defending Danilo Gallinari

Look at the above picture for a moment.  I mean really examine it.  There isn’t a better picture that sums up a game between an 0-12 team and a 3-9 team.  I mean you got David Lee falling and tripping Chris Duhon, Brook watching the whole thing, Rafer Alston covering nobody, and nobody within 10 feet of maybe the best 3 point shooter in the NBA.  Let’s look how this play developed:

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The Star-Ledger looks at the week ahead and determines the Nets could very easily be 0-17 by the end of it.

As the Nets head into Denver, Nuggets coach George Karl, who’s coaches some bad teams in his career, sympathizes with the Nets.

With arena bonds expected to be authorized today, and possibly a ruling in the eminent domain case, this should be an interesting Tuesday on the Brooklyn front.

NAS looked at Sean Williams yesterday. Now read the always awesome Ben Couch’s take on the many they call Swat.

In the latest Nets pile-on, Charley Rosen of FoxSports calls out Brook Lopez’s bad hands and slow feet, and thinks Rafer Alston looks dispirited.

Gregory Hrinya over at Nets Examiner, offers his opinion on Lawrence Frank, and concludes that he shouldn’t be blamed for the Nets awful start.

The Nets injury woes continue, as Lawrence Frank announced after practice today that Brook Lopez, who hasn’t missed a game yet in his career, had sprained his ankle and would be day-to-day headed into tomorrow’s game in Denver.

The Bergen Record’s Al Iannazzone has some quotes from Brook, who didn’t need x-rays, despite the initial pain he felt when he apparently landed on someone’s foot in practice:

“There was initial pain,” Lopez said. “I don’t think it’s anything serious.”

Will you play tomorrow?

“I don’t know,” Lopez said. “Whatever [Tim Walsh] says. It feels fine right now. Trust me, watching film hurt a lot more.”

Fortunately, according to Iannazzone, it looks like Courtney Lee is good to go tomorrow, though it’s still a game-time decision.

Devin Harris’ return is important for so many reasons. The most important reason might be that he makes it so much easier for his teammates:

When a team is struggling, it’s very easy for fans to clamor for that one guy off the bench who’s not getting a lot of playing time. In the case of Sean Williams and the Nets, Williams absolutely needs to be playing more, because there are a number of statistical indicators that show the Nets are a better team this season when SWat is on the court.

For the first few weeks of the season (let’s say, until about the 0-8 mark for the Nets), Williams spent a majority of the team’s games racking up “DNP – Coach’s Decision.” While the Nets were suiting up eight healthy bodies for many of those games, it was somewhat understandable why coach Lawrence Frank hesitated to Call Williams’ number. There’s no doubt that Williams has a number of athletic gifts, but in his first two seasons, he’s really never been able to put things together on the court. After an okayish rookie season, where he put up a PER (Player Efficiency Rating) of 13.84, a shade below league average, Williams had a disaster of a sophomore campaign, shooting 42 percent from the field, scoring 8.7 points per 40 minutes, turning the ball over on 16.2 percent of his possessions, fouling once every five minutes, and sporting a PER of 8.84. Williams second-season also featured such behavioral issues as getting thrown out of a D-League game and getting arrested in March after allegedly throwing a computer monitor at a store clerk in Denver.

But if there was ever a case of “that was then, this is now,” the early stages of Sean Williams’ 2009-10 campaign is it. While he’s only played in about 18 percent of his team’s total minutes, he’s leading the Nets in simple rating, a metric used on 82games that takes into account a player’s +/- along with a team’s production when a certain player is on the court versus when that player is off the court.

With Williams, the Nets are +6.2 when he’s on the court and -14.0 when he’s off the court, good for a net gain of +20.1. There are currently two five-man floor units that are sporting a positive +/- according to 82games, and both of them feature Sean Williams. Most notably, a rotation of Chris Douglas-Roberts-Terrence Williams-Trenton Hassell- Bobby Simmons and Sean Williams is sporting a +15 in the 17.2 minutes they’ve played together this season. The group has an offensive efficiency of 110, a defensive efficiency of 60 and a win percentage of 100. A second rotation of Rafer Alston- CDR- Hassell- Sean Williams and Brook Lopez has a +1 in 18.6 minutes, with an offensive efficiency of 117, a defensive efficiency of 119 and a win percentage of 100.

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