Nets Are Scorching

AP Photo/Bill Kostroun

Hot Hot Hoops – Peninsula is Mightier

While no one has ever stopped me from writing my opinions on Nets Are Scorching, I’ve always sensed that there’s been this unspoken rule about not outwardly ripping on a coach or specific coaching decisions. I get that. I’ve never been a professional coach. I’ve never played professional basketball. I’m just a guy who happens to follow the Nets, who also happens to write a blog about the Nets. It’s a lot easier for me to judge what’s right or wrong about a game-time situation 8 hours after the fact from the comfort of my living room couch.

I’m tempted to make an exception about this unspoken rule after last night’s 87-84 Nets loss to the Miami Heat, but I’ll try to honor the code and instead look at a very specific moment in the game and its aftermath. You could call this moment the turning point if you’d like. Otherwise, I’m going to do my best to withhold any value judgements. Just the facts ma’am.

At the 4:45 mark of the fourth quarter, and the Nets clinging to 80-74 lead, Kiki Vandeweghe took out Keyon Dooling, who had just converted a three-point play when he was fouled on a layup, and put in Courtney Lee, who was shooting 0-7 for the game. Over the next four and a half minutes, the Nets missed all of their field goal attempts, including two missed threes from Lee, who went on to shoot 0-9 for the night. Meanwhile, the Miami Heat, who were without Dwyane Wade for most of the game after he left in the first quarter with an injury, went on an 13-4 run to put the Nets away.

I understand that Keyon Dooling is far from an all-star, especially on a Nets team that would have won two games in a row for only the first time this season if they found a way to overcome their terrible finish. But, Dooling had come into the game at the 2:20 mark of the third and the Nets trailing 66-60. Dooling proceeded to score 10 of his 14 points during that 9+ minute stretch of play. On the aforementioned three point play, Dooling looked absolutely pumped after the foul, and his teammates seemed pumped by his performance as well.

Do you see where I’m going with this? In the game’s critical closing minutes, the guy who perhaps playing the best and providing the most energy on the team in that exact moment, was sent to the bench in favor of a guy who hadn’t hit an open shot all game. I know Courtney Lee is a part of the future of this franchise – he had a great game Tuesday night in Charlotte and I even noticed with about 90 seconds left last night he sprinted back on defense after Michael Beasley rebounded a Devin Harris shot attempt in order to stop a fast break attempt by Miami. But, I would have rather seen Dooling play out the last few minutes of the game, to see if the Nets could have put the Wade-less Heat away, in similar fashion to the way they distanced themselves from the Bobcats on Tuesday. Instead, we saw another Nets collapse. We saw the Nets lose another winnable game. We saw the Nets move one step closer to the worst of numbers in the NBA – 73, as in losses for a season, when the number 6 seemed a lot more plausible in the moment. It’s taking me every last bit of restraint to not say what I truly feel about Kiki Vandeweghe right now.

More thoughts after the jump.
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There’s just something about the Nets losing these gut-wrenching games to the Miami Heat this season, huh? Tonight, the Nets lost a back and forth affair 87-84 at the Izod Center.

• The Heat were able to prevail playing most of the game without superstar Dwyane Wade who left with an injury early in the first quarter. Michael Beasley led the way for Miami, scoring 23 points and grabbing 11 rebounds. The Heat closed this game out on a 13-4 run.
• Devin Harris was in double digits early, but he finished with 18 points and 6 assists on 6-14 shooting.
• Courtney Lee had just an awful night, shooting 0-9 and scoring 2 points. In general, the Nets were awful from outside, shooting 1-15 from three.
• A double-double for Brook Lopez, who finished with 26 points, 10 rebounds and 2 blocks.
• Rafer Alston was 0-5 in his long awaited return to New Jersey, but he gets props for a crafty defensive play on Devin Harris with seconds to go and the Heat up 3, as he pulled the string on Harris in the post, throwing Devo off, who then missed the shot.

So a win huh?  That was pretty exciting.  I said it in the comments of one of the posts today that we shouldn’t shrug off a win against the Bobcats as the Nets beating a crappy team.  The truth is that the Bobcats are a pretty quality opponent, and their loss to the Nets last night actually dropped them back to .500.  Oh and they beat the Heat by about 40 points a month ago (now I am not saying the Nets are 40+ points better than the Heat but this is just to say that the Bobcats are good).  So how did the Nets beat a quality team?  Well, they have been doing the same thing that they have been doing for the most part during this 7 game stretch.  The only difference was last night they did it for 4 quarters instead of three.

Moving onto tonight.  The Heat beat the Nets by 1, and they needed two incredibly lucky three pointers to do so.  I think that this is another game that the Nets can win, only if they play another full 48 minutes though..oh and oh yeah, the return of Rafer Alston!

Onto the lineups…

Devin Harris vs. Rafer Alston

Devin Harris looked like his former self last night.  The numbers don’t really show it, but he was under control, and more importantly only tried to take over when he needed to.  He ran the offense correctly and was finding guys in proper spots.  He will be going against Rafer, who actually has been playing pretty well in Miami.  Hopefully all the bad vibes he had in the Izod Center return to him now that he is a visitor.

Advantage:  Devin Harris

Dywane Wade vs. Courtney Lee

Dywane Wade is playing some really good basketball, and he scares the crap out of me.  However Courtney has been playing well on both sides of the ball, so he might be able to hold Wade down.

Advantage:  Dywane Wade

Jarvis Hayes vs. Quentin Richardson

Mark pointed out to me that Hayes is averaging 10.6 PPG as a starter.  The most important thing to me is that he seems to be a stabilizing factor for this Nets lineup.  You know exactly what you are going to get from him.  A couple of threes, a couple of jumpers, and hard work on the court.  I love CDR and think he should play more, but he has been so inconsistent as of late.  You don’t know if you are going to get the attacking CDR (that puts up a lot of points) or the passive CDR who only takes 2 shots in 30 minutes.  I think that is why Kiki is sticking with Jarvis here.

Advantage:  Push

Yi vs. Micheal Beasley

Beasley looked pretty good during the rookie-sophmore game, but his biggest problem is that it takes him a ton of shots to get his points.  With Dywane Wade on the same team as him, he isn’t going to get the shots he needs to be a 20+ PPG scorer.  He still is a dangerous player though, and if he gets hot, he can really hurt the Nets.  Also, Yi seems to be the best match-up for him (I think he is too athletic for Hump), so that really scares me as well.

Advantage:  Micheal Beasley

Brook Lopez vs. Jermaine O’Neal

Brook was on his way to a really special game, but foul trouble seemed to derail that.  He gets another favorable match-up tonight too.  Jermaine O’Neal is too small to defend Brook in the block, so if he gets the ball in the post (and stays out of foul trouble) he has the chance to have a really big game.

Advantage:  Brook Lopez

The season is more than half over, yet the Nets are getting their first visit at the Izod Center from the Miami Heat tonight, which means we have our first Bloggers Talks of the season featuring Surya Fernandez from the TrueHoop blog, Hot Hot Hoops.

NAS: Since the Nets are one of those teams looking to spend this summer, we’re obviously interested in what people think about the status of Dwyane Wade in Miami. Deep down, do you think he stays, or will he look to go elsewhere if the situation is right (like if he could go play with LeBron James in Brooklyn)?

If you would have asked me this before the season I would have been 50/50 on this but the more the season is progressing I’m more and more convinced that Wade, Lebron and (to a slightly lesser extent) Bosh will stay with their current teams. Yeah, I think Miami has an outside shot at convincing Bosh to sign with them and Lebron’s ego is perhaps getting a bit too grandiose for Cleveland and would suit Brooklyn better but of the three I’m most convinced that Wade stays with Miami. Just because other teams could sign him doesn’t mean their teams don’t have just as many question marks as the Heat’s roster does. But what makes Miami’s situation so unique is that they have no bad contracts and are in prime position to reload their roster anyway Riley (or Wade) sees fit.

NAS: The Heat are clinging to one of the last playoff spots in the East and are around .500. Given the team’s performance the past couple of years, do you get the sense that the franchise is in a bit of a holding pattern? Not good enough to win anything, but not bad enough to warrant blowing the whole thing up and starting again?

No question the Heat is in a holding pattern and many of the fans bemoan a sense of wasted years of Wade’s prime. Heck, many fans (despite the championship!) still lament the Heat had to let go of a young Caron Butler and a resurgent Lamar Odom for Shaq. The Heat surprise no one that they’re .500 and, at best, show flashes of overachieving. At least they have their “go-to” guy in Wade and he is capable of lifting their overall play against quality opponents.

NAS: With Cleveland reportedly close to trading for Amare Soutdemire, a name that’s been linked to the Heat, is there anyone else out there on the trade market you feel is worth pursuing?

The Heat have too many plugs to fill on this roster and it just might be worth it to wait it out and be patient until the summer. As long as the player has an expiring contract, like Roger Mason or Kurt Thomas, I would offer anyone short of Wade and Beasley. I don’t see the point in getting someone less than an All-Star at the moment because it most likely won’t be enough to get the Heat out of the first round.

It’s an established fact that the ladies love Kris Humphries, as do Nets fans who enjoy aggressive, gritty players who aren’t afraid to scrape for an offensive rebound, and shoot an ill-advised 17-foot jumper in the fourth quarter. However, Hump showed what a true fashionista he is during All-Star Weekend, when he donned a snazzy little outfit and walked the runway as part of a fashion show.

I am being dead serious.  Need proof?  Well, there is a post that I did 16 days ago entitled “The Nets Are Learning How To Win.”  I was pretty confident that the Nets were ready to turn the corner after coming off a close loss against the 76ers.  Turns out the post was a little premature because after the Sixers’ game the Nets went on to lose 6 more games.  5 of these losses were close losses where the team just didn’t play well late.

But that doesn’t mean my post was wrong.  The Nets were learning out how to win, but in true Nets fashion, it took a little longer than it should have.  The result?  A win 15 days later.  I thought it would be fun to look at my old post and match it up to the game today to prove that the Nets are learning how to win (everything in block quotes was created 15 days ago):

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Queen City Hoops – Rufus on Fire

On opening night of the 2009-10 season, it was an offensive rebound followed by a putback at the buzzer by Minnesota’s Damien Wilkins that set the Nets on a charted course towards NBA all-time futility. In a kind of symmetry that only seems to happen in sports, an offensive rebound last night in the hands of the Josh Boone helped to kick off the second half of the Nets’ season on a winning note, and could ultimately be the play we all look back on as a season saver for a franchise that’s at times has seemed destined to collide with a 9-73 iceberg.

The fact that the offensive rebound ended up in the hands of Boone of all people, a forgotten soul in Kiki Vandeweghe’s “youth first’ system for the past month, makes the moment all the sweeter. Boone’s NBA career by most accounts has been a series of few ups and mostly downs, so even with the team entering last night’s game with the Charlotte Bobcats at 4-48, it was difficult to make the case that Vandeweghe should even be playing the guy. But motivated by Tony Battie’s injury, and quite possibly the desire to showcase Boone for a trade deadline deal this week, Kiki called Josh’s name early last night in the Nets 103-94 victory, and was rewarded for the decision.

After Brook Lopez fouled out with 1:45 left in the fourth quarter, and the Nets clinging to a 98-92 lead, the Nets needed two things from their frontcourt – defense and rebounding. At the 1:19 mark, Courtney Lee missed a fadeaway jumper from 19-feet out, the kind of shots the Nets have been all to apt to settle for in their series of close fourth quarter contests the past month. Boone somehow ended up with the ball along the sideline, stayed inbounds, and allowed the Nets to reboot their offense with a five point lead intact. A three pointer by Jarvis Hayes with the shot clock expiring, put the Nets up eight, and sealed the game. The Nets had won their fifth game of the season, putting up 101 points against one of the best defenses in the league in Charlotte.

The Nets had their scoring shoes on early last night. Led by 10 first quarter points by both Brook Lopez and Courtney Lee, the Nets were able to put up 31 first quarter points. Unfortunately, the Nets allowed 27 points to the Bobcats, a team that is almost as hard-up to score as the Nets are.

There was a certain familiarity to this game at the onset, but where the script changed was how the way the Nets responded after their initial burst. Similar to their victory against the Los Angeles Clippers last month, the Nets were able to hold off the competition instead of folding up once the pressure starts to build (see their loss to the Milwaukee Bucks last week). After the Bobcats cut the lead to one early in the second quarter, a highlight reel, one-handed dunk from just past the free throw line courtesy of Terrence Williams put the Nets back on track. When Stephen Jackson pulled a long two out of his hat to tie the game at halftime, the Nets responded by outscoring Charlotte 30-21 in the third quarter. If the Nets found a way to respond to adversity like that a little more often, they wouldn’t even be in the discussion of “worst team ever” right now.

There’s also something to be said about how efficient the Nets looked on offense when Lee-Lopez and Devin Harris were all clicking offensively. The trio combined for 54 points on 58 percent shooting. While these numbers may not blow anyone away, it’s the best the Nets have looked offensively as a team in a few weeks.

More final thoughts after the jump:
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Mike Krzyzewski sounded pretty definitive on the Michael Kay show yesterday when asked if he would consider leaving Duke to coach the Nets: I would not. I was asked over the weekend about that after the game. First of all, I have a lot of respect for them. I think it’s a good job, it’s just not a good job for me, and the Nets haven’t offered that. I hate to comment and make it appear that the Nets have done something that they haven’t done. They haven’t done that.

And Rod Thorn sounded pretty definitive about the chances for activity before tomorrow’s trade deadline: “I’d say probably nothing,” Thorn said when asked what the Nets would do. “But you never know. Somebody could call looking for an expiring contract and then we’d be in business. But right now, I don’t see anything of any importance that we have out there.”

Dave D’Alessandro shares his conversation with Mikhail Prokhorov while the two were in Vancouver. Prokhorov still can’t talks basketball until he is officially approved by the NBA.

Is his annual trade deadline list, ESPN’s Bill Simmons lists Brook Lopez as the 14th most untouchable guy in the NBA.

Terrence Williams should have been in this year’s Slam Dunk competition, but when asked about his participation next year by Al Iannazzone, he sounded unsure if he would do it.

The Nets are getting into the pizza delivery business.

TrueHoop’s old friend Kurt Helin talks about the Rod Thorn situation over at his Pro Basketball Talk blog with NBC Sports.