Nets Are Scorching

Stats: 57 G, 57 GS, 19.4 ppg, 5.8 rpg, 1.4 apg, 1.5 bpg, .475 FG%, .798 FT%, 18.2 PER

Preseason expectations: “Brook Lopez is a future All-Star in the NBA and will be the central cog in the Nets’ offense again in his third season. One thing to watch out for is how he copes with the league’s more aggressive stance on player conduct with respect to the referees on the court. We all know, Lopez likes to show his emotions and pout on the court, and the referees aren’t going to be as flexible with it this season. That said, he’ll probably get more calls as he garners more clout around the league and won’t have to complain as much as he did the last two seasons. Still, figure that his total of 5 technical fouls will increase this year.”

The Good: Brook Lopez hasn’t missed a game all season, or in any season – he has a consecutive games streak of 221, including a games started streak of 214. He’s recently started to score at an elite level again as well. After dealing with issues everywhere in the first half of the season, since January 14th he’s scored 20 points or more 11 times and 25 or more seven times. His production heading into the all-star break was at the level I’d expect from a guy with his talent level inside, and he should only get better. He’s also averaging slightly more free throws per minute than last year, an indicator that he’s getting a few more calls.

The Bad: There’s no question that Brook Lopez has taken a step back this season. His rebounding is at a laughable low, grabbing only six boards per 36 minutes. For a guy who’s 6’5″, that’s not bad, but Brook is 7’2″. His rebound percentage is exactly the league average – 10% – which, again, would be fine if he played shooting guard. On top of those issues, Brook has also been less than efficient this year, shooting just 47.5% from the field on exclusively two-pointers. That number was much worse earlier in the season, and has increased from his latest surge. Frankly, I expected a lot more from him at this point, and he’s got a lot of work to make it up.

The Extra: Clearly, Brook Lopez was beaten down for the first half of this season by his summer bout with mononucleosis. He was a step slow and not aggressive going towards the basket, which resulted in a lot of jump shots and a lack of effort. He’s also clashed with Avery Johnson on a couple of occasions this season, presumably for the aforementioned effort issues.

Final Grade: I had high hopes for Lopez this season, and although he came into this season skinny as a rail, his underperformance was at times inexcusable. Still, it’s clear to see that he’s moving forward as a player, and he’s finally started to regain the ability we all know he’s got. He’s hit game-winners with guys literally hitting him in the back, scored 30+ points against great defenders, and looked like the scorer the Nets thought he would become. However, it’s clear he may never be an elite rebounder or #1 option. Thankfully, Deron Williams should open the floor a lot for him in the second half. Grade: C+

Deron Williams & Carmelo Anthony in their old uniforms.

On this week’s episode of TrueHoop TV (which I’m on every week, so you should always be checking it out), we discuss the megadeals that went down in the NBA in these last couple of days, and who we think got the upper hand (hint: most of the guys agree with me).

Check it out!

Stats: 53 G, 0 GS, 3.3 ppg, 2.5 rpg, 0.6 apg, 0.5 bpg, .457 FG%, .500 FT%, 9.67 PER

Preseason Expectations: “Petro has the type of athleticism that should thrive in Avery Johnson’s up-and-down system, and his offensive game should see increased production. Johan’s career shooting percentage is actually quite respectable and as long he takes quality shots, it should continue to improve. On the defensive end, Petro will be relied upon to slow down opposing big men when Brook needs a break. The Nets are expecting Johan Petro to come off the bench and play about 15 minutes a night. If he can play with high energy, get some garbage buckets and be solid on the defensive end, the Nets will be happy with their investment (despite the contract).”

The Good: Hmmm, well, uh Johan Petro has been a real good…..yeah there isn’t much to say here. Johan Petro is what he is (sorry for the cliche). He’s a serviceable but not very talented back-up NBA center that got too much money from the Nets in the offseason. The one positive thing I’ll say for him is that I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the quality of his mid-range jump shot. While he takes it far too often, he does have a decent stroke from 12-16 feet, and has made quite a few this season. Petro’s best all-around game probably came in the Nets 96-94 win over the Bulls on January 5th. He filled up the box score in that game, scoring 4 points, grabbing 4 rebounds, blocking 3 shots and even dishing out 2 assists in just 13 minutes played. But like I said at the top there is not much to go off of here.

The Bad: Aside from giving the Nets virtually nothing at the backup center position, the one thing that has been most disappointing has been his defense. Petro is 7-feet tall and should be a strong defensive force, especially blocking shots. Well despite playing just 11 minutes per game, he’s averaging only 0.5 blocks per contest and I can only remember a handful of times when he’s denied the opposition at the rim. I could choose from a number of things in terms of the bad for Petro, but two I’ll mention are that he’s shooting just 50 percent from the foul line and he’s committing 2.4 fouls per game in limited minutes.

The Extra: Petro has shown that he can be a decent offensive player if given the opportunity but there is really not much to say here. The Nets gave the Frenchman a ridiculous contract last summer and he has produced little to nothing for the team this season.

Final Grade: Johan Petro has certainly not been effective this season but he hasn’t been awful, considering the lowly expectations many Nets fans had for him. As I said above, I’ve been somewhat impressed with his jump shot, although he should focus more on playing in the post than floating around 15 feet away from the basket. Bluntly put, Johan Petro is pretty irrelevant to this team and has done nothing to change my opinion of him as a player so far this season. Grade: C-.

In an article that went up just as the Nets were shocking the NBA yesterday and acquiring Deron Williams from Utah, CNBC’s Darren Rovell shared an interview he had with Nets owner during all-star weekend. In addition to some of the expected Prokhorov quotes about his championship aspirations and the state of the Nets, the Russian also had a unique challenge for the reporter:

What happened off camera with Prokhorov was equally as fascinating. Prokhorov challenged me in hand-eye coordination moves from the Tibetan mixed martial arts discipline of Tescao. I, of course, couldn’t do any one of them. He told me he was working on perfecting about 1,000 of the moves. By the time I met him at 10 am that morning, he had already worked out – twice!

Hilarious. It’s a good interview with Prokhorov as well, as the guy continues to come across as strong and knowledgeable in public.

After being rumored for most of the day, Al Iannazzone is reporting on Twitter that the proposed Troy Murphy/2nd Round Draft Pick to Golden State for Brandan Wright and Dan Gadzuric is official.

With Johan Petro already in the fold, I don’t see where Gadzuric fits in and he may even be waived. But Wright is an interesting pick-up for the Nets. The guy is super-skinny and injury prone but has always packed a lot of production in a minimal number of minutes. We’ll see if Avery uses him as a back-up to Kris Humphries, especially if Travis Outlaw ends up being just as bad at the four as he’s been at the three this season.

As for Troy Murphy, he never got a fair shake in New Jersey and the rationale for that is debatable. He’ll be waived by Golden State. I hope the NJ native gets picked up by a contender like Boston or Miami and he finally gets a chance to play in the postseason.

Respect isn’t something the Nets haven’t exactly grown accustomed to over the last season and half, finding themselves at the bottom of standings and at the butt of jokes. Really, though, who could blame the pundits and critics? The Nets lost 70 games in 2009-2010. Why should a team that toes the line between laughingstock and lost cause garner any respect from anyone?

Last summer certainly didn’t help. After sketching out the figurative Blueprint for Greatness to take over New York, the free-agency plans fizzled. LeBron James and the rest had no respect for the Nets. Travis Outlaw only respected the $35 million contract he signed. Jordan Farmar only respected getting out of the shadow of a franchise that didn’t need him. Johan Petro respected playing time. Acquiring Anthony Morrow was probably just a stroke of luck.

As a result, the consensus surfaced that the New Jersey Nets were beholden to mediocrity, with no chance to lure even the most insignificant of NBA stars to play in Newark even if it meant rekindling things in a shiny billion-dollar arena in Brooklyn just two years later. Then the season started, and the Carmelo Anthony talk reared its ugly head. But as close as the two teams reportedly got to making a deal, no one outside of the Nets’ fan base really believed anything would go through. ’Melo won’t want to play in New Jersey. It’s a pit. He’ll never sign the extension. He’s bound for the Knicks, the others said.

So the talks subsided, and those Knicks fans, fresh off the overconfidence of signing Amare Stoudemire, took solace in the fact that their cross-river rivals were still merely an exercise in failure. It didn’t help things for the Nets when the Knicks darted out beyond expectations, Stoudemire was in the middle of MVP talks, and the Nets were laying an egg — yet again.

The song remained the same throughout late December and January, when rumblings came about again that Carmelo Anthony might be on the move. In this case, the Nets lost either way: if they couldn’t strike a deal, they were the same unattractive losers; if they did, they gave up way too much for him. It was a no-win proposition. Mikhail Prokhorov figured that out, and so he put the kibosh on the negotiations.

Immediately, it was fodder for the overzealous Knicks fans to write off acquiring Anthony as a foregone conclusion with any other possible suitors out of the way. Prokhorov looked like a fool who couldn’t close, and the Nets were still terrible.

Things lay dormant for awhile, and the trade talk died down, but no matter what speculation there was, the Nets weren’t a part of it — until shortly before All-Star Weekend, when, once more, it was reported that the Nets were flirting with Anthony. The Nets and Nuggets talked, and the Knicks and Nuggets talked. Anthony and Prokhorov met. A deal was this close. But late Monday night, James Dolan and Donnie Walsh won the “prize.”

There wasn’t much discussion of the embarrassment of riches that the Knicks had to send to Denver in return or how historically bad the Knicks’ defense might be; it was a sensationalized moment of glory for New York and Carmelo Anthony. For Mikhail Prokhorov it was more of a sensationalized moment of ridicule.

Even with all his “cool,” it was clear that Prokhorov had no basketball sense, that he was just an all-talk playboy, and that his five-year plan for greatness was an unmitigated, overblown facade. But it wasn’t his fault at all — he foolishly got involved with a doomed franchise that had no hope for the future. The Knicks had set themselves apart from their future city companions.

On Wednesday morning, things changed just a bit. The sports world was categorically stunned by a trade that sent Deron Williams, one of the league’s top point guards, to the Nets in exchange for Devin Harris, Derrick Favors, and two first-round picks. Immediately, the masses’ perspective on the weekend’s transgressions changed a bit.

Suddenly, Prokhorov was no longer the weak-kneed, out-witted idiot he was two days earlier. He was now the understated mastermind of acquiring the star that everyone knew someone of his personality and glamor needed. Even the Nets’ once-apparent failure was reconsidered as a success: Prokhorov, in a moment of quick-thinking, had simply driven up the price for his Manhattan neighbors to acquire their star.

In a far different state of affairs, the egg (yolk and all) was on the Knicks’ face. It has no doubt been a day of vindication for the Russian owner, but what has become most ostensible is that, between the Nets and Knicks, it’s definitely personal. The second the Nets threw up the Blueprint for Greatness billboard, it became a competition.

Up until today, though, it was a fairly one-sided; in fact, the Knicks didn’t even recognize the Nets are suitable challengers. Goliath didn’t concern himself with David. The hare wasn’t too worried about the tortoise. Michigan didn’t break a sweat before its game against Appalachian State.

By no means are the Knicks done for, and the Nets still don’t have a chance at a title for a few years. And the Nets still face an unjust shortage of recognition. In fact, analysts today even implied that the Nets had given up too much for Williams, and reports already have come up that Deron Williams is going to hate playing for the Nets so much that he’s sure to dip after next season.

But what is clear is that the long-term vision for this team does not simply blow in the wind, and Mikhail Prokhorov has proven himself much more savvy an owner than anyone could have anticipated. Furthermore, this deal puts the Knicks on notice: the Nets aren’t going to submit without a fight. Completely overshadowing the six-month-long Anthony discussions with a sudden deal for a player even better than Anthony wasn’t a bad first step in making the climb out of obscurity and demanding respect from the rest of the league.

Take heed: the New Jersey Nets aren’t just losers anymore.

Update 2: I will be on WCWP Sports in New York at 10 PM tonight talking about you know what. Link when one becomes available.

Update: I will be on The Zone: 1280 in Salt Lake City at 5:30 EST to talk about the Deron Williams deal. Tune in!

I appeared on the Davis Sports Deli Podcast (Trade Deadline Edition) with Jon Santiago to talk about – what else – the Deron Williams trade to the Nets. Be sure to bookmark DSD – it’s a constantly updated site on all things NBA with some really great basketball minds.

As a note: this is the first of many interviews that I’ll be doing today.

Thanks again to Jon for having me on!

It’s a slippery slope when a sports blog I happen to write for becomes a pseudo-therapeutic outlet for me, so I’ll try to keep this a one shot deal. But after my post yesterday reacting to the Carmelo Anthony-to-the-Knicks debacle and then today’s stunning news that the Nets had acquired Deron Williams from the Utah Jazz, I feel that I need to own up to the fact that I was an over-the-top, reactionary, negative-nellie on Tuesday.

It wasn’t that I was wrong to post what I did, but I was wrong to post when I did – a couple of days before the trading deadline would officially end, and with the Nets still sitting on a boatload of assets, including Derrick Favors, Devin Harris, Troy Murphy’s expiring contract and numerous draft picks, many with lottery potential. In fact, after my initial post went up yesterday, my colleague Devin calmly wrote me that he respected what I wrote, disagreed with most of it, and isn’t going to issue any opinions until there’s a clearer resolution with the trade deadline.

That didn’t stop me from digging myself deeper earlier this morning, when I gave a snarky retort about the front office in my daily link. What can I say? I was under the belief that Golden State’s expiring contracts and Caron Butler were the best the Nets were going to be able get before Thursday. I actually found myself agonizing by the idea that the Nets couldn’t pry Greg Oden and his microfractured knees from Portland as a way to save face for sticking their necks on the line in the ‘Melo sweepstakes only to watch him go to the Knicks – where he wanted to be all along. I’ve been a Nets fan a long time, and have followed some very bad teams. I’ve dealt with a lot of disappointment and justified a number of bad front office moves for the sake of my fandom, and felt I was just hitting my breaking point with the current front office. It was almost more offensive to me that Mikhail Prokhorov and Billy King were putting themselves out there and talking so big only to continually fail rather than just talking and acting like failures like past administrations.

And then Prokhorov and King turn around and hit the monster of all home runs for this organization, for this franchise. Let me be perfectly clear and as hyperbolic as humanly possible – the acquisition of Deron Williams is the most important trade this organization has made since they received Jason Kidd from Phoenix. Williams is the floor general championship teams desperately need – a PG who can pass, shoot, score and most importantly, make all of his teammates better. With one swift move, the Nets have obtained someone who can run the pick-and-roll with Brook Lopez better than any other PG out there, a guy who’s going to be able to effortlessly dump the ball off to Kris Humphries for an easy dunk at the basket, a guy who’s going to make Anthony Morrow – the best three-point shooter in the NBA – perpetually open from long distance as he drives to the basket and kicks the ball back out. He’s also a legitimate NBA star and if this league continues to go in the star-centric direction, he brings the Nets instant credibility – much in the way ‘Melo would have, except Williams may actually help these guys win something more than regular season games.

There are of course, negatives to be considered. The Nets paid a hefty price for Williams – Devin Harris was a solid PG and was put through a lot the past two seasons, unfairly. Derrick Favors still shows promise, even if he didn’t impress in the Rookie-Sophomore game last weekend. Those two draft picks will most likely be lottery picks, unless the Nets go on a monster run this season and the Warriors have a surprise season next year. But for all of the reasons I didn’t want to see the Nets give up so much for Anthony are the reasons I support this Williams trade. You don’t go all in unless it’s for a player you know makes this team better. Williams is that player.

Then there’s the murky contract situation to consider. The Nets can’t extend Williams until after the current CBA expires, though he does have a player option that is likely to pay him more in 2012-13 than he would make under the new CBA. So it sounds like either way the Nets have their star for Brooklyn. Meanwhile, with Williams rightly or wrongly being blamed for the ouster of Jerry Sloan in Utah, one of the league’s truly great coaches, who knows how the PG will react to Avery Johnson – not known as one of the league’s more flexible taskmasters.

These are questions that won’t be answered until well after the shock and awe of this trade wears off. But if I haven’t been clear enough, let me say it so: I was an absolute idiot yesterday and I will really try and be more disciplined in the future when doubting Mikhail Prokhorov and Co.