Nets Are Scorching

While this post may come across as stating the obvious, it’s worth noting that one of the main consequences of the Nets landing the third pick in the draft is that, barring some kind of blockbuster trade, Devin Harris is going to be the Nets’ point guard this coming season.

Logic seemed to dictate that despite the talk that Devin Harris and John Wall could have coexisted in the same backcourt, the Nets would have explored trading Harris if they landed the number one pick to make room for the Kentucky point guard. This is clearly a moot point now, and I don’t know what to think about that.

On one hand, I think trading Harris this summer was a lose-lose proposition. His value is probably as low as it’s going to get, despite showing flashes of being the type of dynamic player he was two seasons ago with Vince Carter in the backcourt. Harris gets injured too often, relies too much on drawing contact around the hoop to get his points (ergo leading to more injuries), doesn’t shoot well and reportedly rarely demonstrated leadership abilities when it was clearly *his* team last year.  But then you look at his 08-09 season, specifically the first part of it, and you have to wonder if Harris can match that type of production again if there’s another scorer on the floor to draw the attention of defenders. And that’s what would have made trading Harris so maddening – because they would have received spare parts or bad contracts in return for a player that is hypothetically not that far away from finding it again.

In an interview in Russia, new owner Mikhail Prokhorov said he was not disappointed by losing out on the Wall sweepstakes because the Nets had Harris. And while I have to praise Prokhorov for sticking up for his current guys and being an optimist, it’s easy to question whether or not the Nets would have been better in the long term having the opportunity to select Wall and moving Harris. But with that situation now being very unlikely, the Nets and Nets fans need to start operating as if Harris is there point guard now and in the foreseeable future.

Man, does this hurt now.

Welcome back to NetsAreScorching for the third edition of the mock draft. The first two were relatively stable, with a couple of changes. Now that all of the combine numbers are out there, however, things are starting to shake up a bit. As a result, you’ll still see a lot of similarities at the top (for now), but a lot of rumbling in later picks as the mock goes forward.

We’ll be doing the top 20 this week, and move up to the top 27 (where the Nets’ 2nd pick is) next week.

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Jeff Van Gundy, a leading candidate to be the next coach of the Nets, reportedly won’t be coaching anywhere next season. Dave D’Alessandro is reporting, and Rod Thorn more or less confirmed that JVG has informed executives that he’s going to keep his spot as a television analyst next season.

“I don’t want to say anything about it … but I think from everything I gather, that it’s probably true,” Thorn said today.

Asked whether it was accurate to state it from another perspective, and confirm that Van Gundy is no longer one of the “four to six” candidates on his short list, Thorn replied, “That would be correct.”

I think JVG is a great coach, but the biggest knock against the guy is his commitment to coaching. He’s left both the Knicks and the Rockets high and dry during his career and with so many teams looking for coaches this summer, this was probably his best shot to get back into it. If he’s taking himself out of the running, I think it’s fair to question whether he’ll ever want to coach in the NBA again, and if there’s a situation where he says he does, I don’t know if you can believe him.