Nets Are Scorching

Nets Post-Up is a stream of consciousness podcast without editing. Luckily, the author can filter profanity (sort of), possesses excellent grammar (not really), and isn’t lazy about spelling (because there isn’t any in the audio medium). Basically, he’s amazing (no question).

First of all, my apologies. I realize after my first Nets Post-Up that this will be the second straight week where woman parts are mentioned. I guess this just gives the website more bro points, if anything. In any case, if you hear any banging in the background, it’s because my house is going through some repair and I couldn’t tell the workers to be quiet as I recorded this podcast. Why? Because there were four of them and they all looked like they could eat Mr. T for breakfast, crap out Rambo, and flush it down with no problem.

Enjoy!

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It’s a concept that’s been brandied about since the Terrence Williams trade – that the Nets could just drop off a ton of picks on Masai Ujiri’s doorstep and get away with bringing Carmelo Anthony into the fold while keeping Derrick Favors. The thing is, this idea seemed to be more of the idea of Nets fans, who want their cake and eat it too. However, in this morning’s Denver Post, Woody Paige makes it sound like it’s a legit option:

The Nets now have a potential five first-round choices in the next three drafts — and seem more and more inclined each passing day to give up three No. 1s — or at least two and a player drafted No. 3 this year (Derrick Favors) — in return for Melo.

I would say a thousand times yes to the prospects of getting ‘Melo and keeping Favors. Maybe Favors doesn’t end up a superstar, but he’s already progressing at a faster pace than I think many expected. Most importantly, he’s not a liability on the court right now, and that’s half the battle right there.

AP Photo/Bill Kostroun

Boxscore – Truth About It – Bullets Forever

Well, as I mentioned yesterday, this is poised to be a “very special” Nets Are Scorching recap, for what turned out to be a very frustrating game to watch. For the first time this season, the entire Nets Are Scorching crew (sans Justin and Dennis, but we still love them) got together for a game at the Prudential Center, and even old editor emeritus and NBA Playbook specialist Sebastian Pruiti joined the crew. I choose to lead with these facts, because for me, hanging out with all these guys under one roof, when we’re all typically strewn across the U.S., was an absolute pleasure, as opposed to the game we watched where the Nets nearly blew a 23-point lead to a Wizards team missing John Wall and others (like Yi Jianlian, who I stupidly referred to as being active in yesterday’s pregame. Mea culpa. Mea culpa).

It’s a bit difficult to provide superior play-by-play insight of a game when you’re seated in the mezzanine of an arena with five guys shooting the breeze. So you’ll have to bare with the rambling nature of this post. For starters, let me point out that Sebastian is as sharp as ever. Watching a game with him is like sitting next to Mike Fratello, constantly analyzing the motion on the court like it’s second nature. Many Nets fans have been kicking and screaming that Brook Lopez – who finished with 18 points and 5 rebounds in a foul plagued 26 minutes – is just not being aggressive enough on the offensive end this season. But listening to Sebastian point out how the Nets only run a limited number of offensive sets with Lopez as the focal point (and becoming predictable in the process), and watching it unfold before me, has me backing off the Brookie Monster for the time being.

Overall, this wasn’t a game that you could take a bunch of positives from. It goes into the “win is a win” camp. Yes, it ended the slide for the Nets, but both teams shot in the vicinity of 40 percent. The Nets outrebounded Washington 52-37 which is always nice (thank you Kris Humphries and your 17 rebounds and 12 points). The Nets also got to the free throw line 47 times (19 more than Washington). Otherwise, the Nets played the first 24 minutes with total intensity – especially the first quarter when they outscored the Wizards 32-17 and were not only playing super efficient on the offensive end, but were all over the place (in a good way) on the defensive end. But by the time the second half rolled around, they were lulled to sleep and the offense ground to a halt. The standing around and staring at whoever has the ball at the moment is confounding. Travis Outlaw, who had one of his better offensive nights in a while, finishing with 13 points (thanks to going 7-8 from the FT line) continues to do things on the court that puzzle me. At one point in the first half, Brook drew a double-team in the post and kicked it out to the right elbow to Outlaw, who then proceeded to dribble into the same double-team Lopez was passing out of.

Naturally, it’s Gilbert Arenas who carries the Wizard back into the thick of it in the second half, as the group of us more or less dismissed Arenas as a non-factor in the first half (he did have all of two points if I remember correctly). “Where’s Nick Young” Sebastian kept asking before he dropped 22 points on the Nets. Stop asking, I say.

On a closing note – let me just say that there needs to be clearer signage in Downtown Newark that will help get fans back to Newark Penn Station after the game. Naturally, this comes after the lot of us wandered the streets of Downtown Newark for a good 20 minutes before stumbling upon the train station. Yes, it’s apparently right there, and yes, I did the same thing two weeks earlier in broad daylight without any problem, but if Brett Yormark really wants to get more fans from NYC to the games, the least he could do is help set us back in the right direction home (no disrespect to you Newark folks out there).

And so ends, the greatest recap ever. Or so it seemed at the time.

The Nets (6-19) look to get off their 8-game slide when the Washington Wizards (6-17) come to the Prudential Center in Newark. The Wiz may be without rookie PG phenom John Wall, who is bothered with his knee issue.

Meanwhile, in what will surely be dubbed a “very special Nets game,” the Nets Are Scorching team will be attending tonight as a united group. We’ll hopefully be able to provide you with some insights (or something) from our group experience.

Here are a few things to watch for tonight:

Can I Get a SG? Or a SF? The Nets are without Anthony Morrow (hamstring), Damion James (foot) and Terrence Williams (Little Generaled). On Tuesday night these injuries/trades led to Quinton Ross and Stephan Graham in the starting line-up. The Nets can now add newly acquired Sasha Vujacic to the mix, who I think is going to find himself in a much bigger role in NJ than in Laker-land.

More From the Rook. With trade rumors circulating, Derrick Favors had one of the better games of his young career on Tuesday with 10 points and 13 rebounds. It seems like his shift to the starting lineup could come any day now. You don’t think the Nets are showcasing him for anyone? Nah….

Don’t Let Yi Jianlian Beat You. Because that’s just embarrassing.

Enjoy the game folks, and let’s go Nets.

This story has been circulating the Interwebs for a few days now, so I guess it’s time for me to throw my opinion/snarky reaction into the mix.

Thanks to some digging around by Net Income, he/she/it discovered that a few lawyers are seeking to trademark the name “Brooklyn New Yorkers,” and there are also multiple images/logos of a player playing basketball over the Brooklyn Bridge. Could this be the Nets new team name when they move to Brooklyn?:

There’s no indication in the US Patent and Trademark Office files that the Nets are associated with the lawyers. A spokesperson for the team declined comment Monday when asked by NetsDaily about the trademark applications. A spokesperson for Mikhail Prohorov’s Onexim Group told NetsDaily recently that the applications are “not ours”.  The attorney of record on three of the five applications has not responded to a request for information.

Well, as the story says, we don’t know if this is, in fact the Nets doing. As both a Brooklyn resident and a Nets fan, my opinions are twofold here. First, I totally get/understand/agree with the Nets looking to change their identity in two years. For me, as long as Drazen Petrovic’s jersey remains hanging at the Barclays Arena, I’m not going to get upset by the idea of the organization starting fresh, totally fresh.

With that said, Brooklyn is a unique place. Though it’s a part of New York City, Brooklyn truly is its own brand – or at least its residents think so. It’s a city within a city, and many people here think it’s even better than “The City.” It’s hard to argue with that, thought that’s a discussion for another day. Where I’m going with this is for whoever is trademarking this phrase, calling something the Brooklyn “New Yorkers” seems to fly in the face of the vibe of this borough. We’re technically New Yorkers, we’re geographically New Yorkers, but we live in “Brooklyn” not New York or New York City. So please… you got to do better than this, whoever you are.

There are some games for which you can accept a loss. Take Sunday’s defeat at the hands of the Lakers, for example. Then there are some games that are just hard to watch. See Tuesday’s catastrophe against the Philadelphia 76ers.

While a 77-point performance ordinarily wouldn’t throw up too many red flags as far as particularly disastrous losses go, there were circumstances that made last night’s contest less than palatable. Most disgusting was the fact that the Nets managed to outrebound the 76ers by a margin of 51-36; that included a 19-5 advantage on the offensive boards for the Nets. That a team could haul in that many offensive rebounds (several of which were caught in the immediate basket area) and only rack up 17 second-chance points is really beyond me. With Brook Lopez and Derrick Favors down low, there is absolutely no reason that the Nets shouldn’t convert on more of those additional opportunities.

The Nets looked very poor in the fourth quarter, missing field-goal and free-throw attempts with regularity. Still, they found themselves down 3 points with under a minute to play. When the Sixers came down the floor, it was imperative that the Nets not foul. Andre Iguodala had the ball in isolation at the top of the key with Stephen Graham defending. He drove left and pulled up for an awkward, off-balance shot falling toward the baseline. It was off … only Graham fouled him. It is this kind of play that justifies why Graham shouldn’t be in the rotation,  as if his foul of Jeff Green in the second overtime of the Oklahoma City game weren’t enough to make the case. Physical errors will happen; mental lapses in key moments are unacceptable.

Coming in at a close second to the rebounding woes is the poor shot selection on the part of the Nets — not just where on the floor they shot from or whether the shots were contested but also the individual players who were taking the shots for the Nets. Last I checked, Ben Uzoh and Graham were not scorers at the NBA level. Nevertheless, at the end of the night, those two had combined to shoot 5-of-16 overall from the floor. And while it is usually acceptable to have Kris Humphries putting back shots around the rim, tonight was not his night. Shooting an awful 1-of-10 from the floor, Humphries became frustrated when his putbacks weren’t going, and he started with isolation post attempts and mid-range jumpers. Anyone who watched him play last year knows that is a recipe for failure.

The plenitude of shots that these three heaved up begs the question as to why the Nets’ offensive stars were conspicuously absent from the offensive scheme. Devin Harris and Brook Lopez only took 22 shots. A game after shining toward the end of the game, Lopez was a nonfactor down the stretch, unable to score or rebound with any frequency in the fourth quarter. Although part of the blame for that has to fall on Avery Johnson, who ultimately could call a play to post up Lopez on any given possession, Lopez needs to work harder to get good position so that Harris and Farmar will have no choice to feed him the ball in the post.

With all these offensive struggles (the Nets have averaged just over 86 points over their last six games), something has to be done. The one immediate solution that comes to mind is perhaps activating Troy Murphy. He hasn’t been very effective in the minutes he has played this season, but he has been afforded no opportunity to get into a rhythm on the court — at all. It’s very important for a three-point shooter like him to get consistent minutes so he can start knocking them down with regularity. Also, the benching of Travis Outlaw is understandable, but it’s not like the Nets are shooting much better without him. Might it be a better solution to plug him back in to the lineup and let him shoot his way out of it? The one thing that has stood out about Outlaw is that, irrespective of how cold he is for the entire game, he can hit big shots down the stretch. When he hit that three-pointer to cut the deficit to 3 tonight, it seemed destined to go in. Outlaw should be in games late just for his ability to hit the big shot.

By the way, at one point, the Nets had the following lineup on the floor: Jordan Farmar, Quinton Ross, Stephen Graham, Derrick Favors, and Johan Petro. That’s not exactly the best way to go about breaking an offensive slump.

Regardless, it seems it is time for a change at power forward. Humphries has vastly exceeded expectations, but offense is the area of focus right now. Both Murphy (over the course of his career) and Favors (over the course of this season) have proven that they can match Humphries’ rebounding production, and both of those guys would be offensive upgrades over Humphries. There’s nothing to lose, really, so why not give it a try?

Anthony Morrow’s injury really hurts the team. If he’s out for any extended period of time, the Nets will be out their most reliable shooter and their only consistent perimeter threat. Forgive me if I have no confidence in Sasha Vujacic to come in and fill that role adequately. The Nets are going to have to be cognizant of getting to the rim more to fill the void of shots that Morrow isn’t taking, rather than substituting his looks with those by less adept shooters on the team. His absence also widens the opportunity for Nets players who should be glued to the bench to get in to the game — Both Graham and Quinton Ross started the game, constituting one of the worst starting wing tandems in the entire NBA.

One saving grace for Uzoh: he was very active on the defensive end. His energy and effort on that end are assets to the team. He still has room to improve, though: on one play, Graham was checking Iguodala on the right wing when he drove baseline, beating Graham easily. Lopez, Favors, and Uzoh were all around Brand, and none of them turned around to see Iguodala and help defend him. As a result, he finished with a powerful reverse dunk. Uzoh was the closest to AI, so it was his responsibility first to get there and help.

With the continued offensive struggles on the part of the Nets, the acquisition of a playmaker on offense is becoming a more pressing need.

In a rumor you’ve only head about 48 times since the start of the season, the Nets and the Nuggets are in “serious” talks about Carmelo Anthony, Channel 7 in Denver is reporting. Of course, this renewed momentum has been brought on by the Nets trade of Terrence Williams yesterday for draft picks and Sasha Vujacic.

The package being discussed remains Derrick Favors, Troy Murphy’s corpse expiring contract and two draft picks. However, the catch still remains whether or not Carmelo Anthony will sign an extension with the Nets, which could scuttle the whole deal – or hey, maybe Billy King and Mikhail Prokhorov are THAT confident in their program and in Brooklyn that they believe they’re going to “convince” him to stay once he helps the Nets get over the hump and win 30 games.

Yes, that’s sarcasm. At this point, I just want this deal to happen so it’s over with and those of us out there who believe it’s going to be a mistake can be proven right. But hey, at least a trade will give Prokhorov and Bret Yormark a chance to develop a really good zinger about the Knicks, which is what really counts here, right?

While I still don’t necessarily agree with this deal (I think the Nets could have done better), now that I’m a little more levelheaded and see why this trade was done I gave some of my thoughts on the deal over at the official ESPN TrueHoop page. I’ll echo them here:

Despite his talent, Terrence Williams clearly didn’t fit this Nets team. Being in Avery Johnson’s doghouse isn’t good for anybody — just ask Troy Murphy — and the Nets certainly weren’t promoting him as an asset. His issue has always been his poor decision-making, and Houston has the right system to change that.

But for the Nets, this is clearly a set-up deal. In terms of on-the-court value, it looks like the Nets got 70 cents on the dollar, but two first-rounders and an expiring contract in Sasha Vujacic means the Nets get three trade assets for the price of one. That gives them much more flexibility when making deals for anybody, including that guy up in Denver everyone seems to be talking about so much.

The assets acquired may not be worth much — a Lakers pick late in the first round isn’t going to help many deals, and the Houston pick is lottery-protected — but if these picks are used in a deal for Carmelo Anthony, I don’t think too many fans will be complaining in the long run.