Nets Are Scorching

The Nets closed out the basketball-era at the Meadowlands the same way a vast majority of evenings at the Izod Center have finished this season – with a loss. The Charlotte Bobcats were able to brush off a strong third quarter by the Nets, cruising to a 105-95 victory.

• The Nets were torched by the Bobcats in the first half, giving up 59 points on 54 percent shooting to Charlotte. But the Nets actually grabbed a quick one-point lead in the third quarter, before going ice cold from the floor, giving the Bobcats breathing room to the finish line.
• Future trivia question: Who was the final player to score a basket at the Meadowlands? Terrence Williams. TWill’s late season run continued, as he scored 21 points on 10-19 shooting, grabbed 13 rebounds and dished 6 assists.
• Devin Harris heated up in the third quarter en route to 22 points on 6-18 shooting. Only 1 assist for the point guard.
• Charlotte had 7 players finish in double figures, led by Stephen Jackson with 17 points. They also had 31 assists on 43 field goals.
• With Jarvis Hayes and Keyon Dooling hurting, and Kris Humphries leaving the game early with an injury, the Nets bench only scored 4 points, compared with 50 points for the Bobcats. That’s right, a 46-point swing.

While most teams are resting starters as the playoffs quickly approach, you won’t be seeing that tonight from Coach Larry Brown.  Using my memory (which has been known to fail me), I don’t really remember coach Brown sitting his starters down the stretch, and I don’t expect that now.  This means the Nets are going to be involved in a battle for their final game in the Meadowlands.

While the Nets don’t really have anything to play for, the Bobcats are fighting for playoff position, and for pride.  The Nets have beat this Bobcats team twice already, and I can guarantee you they don’t want it to happen a third time.  The Nets have beaten some  solid teams, but the Bobcats are the best team they have beaten all year, and with them coming off of some rest, I see them pushing the Bobcats to the limit…onto the lineups…

Devin Harris vs. Raymond Felton

Advantage:  Devin Harris

Courtney Lee vs. Stephon Jackson

Advantage:  Stephon Jackson

Terrence Williams vs. Gerald Wallace

Advantage:  Gerald Wallace

Yi vs. Boris Diaw

Advantage:  Boris Diaw

Brook Lopez vs. Theo Ratliff

Advantage:  Brook Lopez

The last time the Bobcats came to New Jersey, it was victory number one of the season. Will the Nets be able to close the Meadowlands in style with a victory over the team they’ve already picked off twice? Here to discuss his playoff-bound Charlotte Bobcats is Brett Hainline of Queen City Hoops.

NAS:  The Bobcats are the only above .500 team the Nets have taken down twice this season. Is there something about the Nets that presents a bad match-up for the Bobcats, or is this totally coincidental?

Rather than cop-out and say coincidence, how about this:  The Bobcats struggle with turnovers (1st in turnover rate) but make their living forcing turnovers (4th in the league in forced turnover rate), and despite the Nets being a weak defensive team, New Jersey is 19th in turnover rate and 13th in forced turnover rate – not great by any stretch, but decent.  In their two losses to the Nets, the Bobcats lost the turnover battle 33-27.

NAS:  What are your expectations for the Bobcats headed into the playoffs for the first time? Is their defense capable of giving a scare to the Magic in the first round?

No expectations – I am just looking forward to Charlotte getting to host playoff basketball again.  This is a big step for the Bobcats winning the city back over and if they can win a game or two against the Magic, all the better.  With the center-quad squad healthy again, the Bobcats have a lot of bodies to throw at Dwight Howard and the more single coverage they can use the better.  Between the Cats defense, and Dwight’s occasional foul trouble, I could see Charlotte winning a couple, but not the series.

Those of you out there who have followed my blogging all season, should know that I’ve always been a New Yorker rooting for the New Jersey Nets, and the general hassle of getting out to the Meadowlands has always limited my ability to attend live Nets games. Though I’ve been a diehard fan of this franchise since the 92-93 season, I actually didn’t get around to attending my first game in-person at the Meadowlands until the 2001-02 season – an amusing blowout of the New York Knicks where a bunch of Knicks fans sitting near my brother and I kept trying to convince us that the Nets were a flash in the pan that season. And you wonder why I’ve always thought the Knicks and their fanbase were bush-league.

So, with the Nets playing for the final time at the Meadowlands tonight, I can’t honestly speak about things from a sense-memory perspective like I could when the Mets closed down Shea Stadium in 2008. However, there are a number of “Meadowlands Moments” that helped cement my loyalty as a Nets and basketball fan. Rather than arbitrarily “rank” these, I’m going to list some of my personal favorite Meadowlands moments, games and plays that will stick with me for the rest of my fandom.

Read more…

One of the cool things about running a blog is that you occasionally get the pleasure of having advanced copies of books sent to you to check out.  In this case, the book is Stumbling on Wins, the new book by Dave Berri and Martin Schmidt, authors of a book I reference a lot on this site: The Wages of Wins.  So why am I telling you about this?  Well, in addition to the copy that was sent to me, there were a couple copies to give away.  So what better way to give these a copy away than to have a contest where you need to answer some stat related questions?

Here are the rules.  I am going to ask 4 questions, and you can submit the answers in the comments (make sure you are using your correct e-mail address, because this is how I will be getting in contact with the winners).  When you submit your answers you automatically get one entry, and for every question you get right, you get an additional entry.

So let’s say you get 3 questions right.  You will have 4 entries in the drawing (the most you can get is 6).  I will accept entries until 9:00 AM (48 hours) Wednesday morning, and will announce the winners around 10.  Hopefully, if everything works out I will get the books out to the winners that day.  Questions after the jump:

Read more…

The NBA thus far has not commented on the newest accusation that an investment bank owned by Mikhail Prokhorov’s firm Onexim, did business with the U.S.-sanctioned Zimbabwe.

Devin Harris thanks the Meadowlands and the fans for all of the memories.

Larry Brown, who was there when the Meadowlands opened in 1980, will be coaching the Bobcats tonight in the last game there: One of the coaches who opened the Meadowlands in 1981, (first regular-season game Oct. 30, 1981), Larry Brown, will be on the sidelines for the last NBA game. He doesn’t really remember opening the joint and doesn’t recall it as a big deal. “Bruce Springsteen opened it [with six concerts], so you know that’s big,” Brown said.

Julian Garcia on the last game at the Meadowlands tonight: It is hard to imagine anyone shedding a tear over the Nets leaving an arena long considered one of the dreariest and most uncomfortable in sports. But not everyone is glad to see the Nets go, even if their fans will soon be treated to many of the same comforts that supporters of teams like the Mavericks have enjoyed for years.

Courtney Lee talking with his hometown Indy Star about his trade and season with the Nets: “It was a dagger at the beginning,” Lee said about the trade. “. . . I was in the Finals a year ago, it was an unbelievable run, and once you experience that, you want to get back to it. I can’t even describe how long ago that feels like.”

The New Britain Herald states the case for Tom Thibodeau, an assistant coach with the Boston Celtics, to be the next head coach for the Nets.

With its sincerest apologies to the Nets and Knicks, the Columbus Dispatch opines that LeBron James will be back in Cleveland next year.

Meanwhile, David Lee is playing what might be his last game with the Knicks tonight, especially if the Nets come a-calling this summer, Frank Isola reports.