Nets Are Scorching

The Nets have unveiled their latest midtown Manhattan billboard, this time promoting their newest acquisition in Deron Williams, and their move to Brooklyn in 2012. This looks great, but similar to what I said after the organization was pumping their “Blueprint for Greatness” billboard across the street from Madison Square Garden — just be careful.

I get it, the Nets desperately need to poach from Knicks country if they’re ever going to build up a fanbase in Brooklyn, but it’s going to take more than fancy, oversized billboards to make that happen. The Blueprint for Greatness was a lot of fun. It made James Dolan, the owner of the Knicks mad, which is pretty awesome. But it also made the Nets organization look stupid, when the whole premise of the billboard was to fire a warning shot to the league and the Knicks during free agency. As you might remember, the Nets didn’t walk away with LeBron James and Chris Bosh, or even Amare Stoudemire. They got Travis Outlaw and Jordan Farmar.

In this case, the billboard doesn’t even cast doubt on the idea that Deron Williams will be in Brooklyn in 2012. I want to believe that too, but it’s impossible for me to be as convinced as they are in the Nets marketing department. There have already been a number of members of the sports media who see no scenario where DWill stays. Personally, I think their opinions on the subject are as valid as mine, but if he does bolt, the Nets have egg on their faces again. If God forbid he signs with the Knicks? Forget it. Deron Williams won’t be coming to Brooklyn. He’ll be destroying it.

I appreciate that Brett Yormark and company like to swing for the fences and I’m sure a big risk-taker like Mikhail Prokhorov loves this kind of bombast, but the Nets are still the Nets — a punchline until further notice that can’t even get their games on TV in April. I was told once a long time ago to be careful what I say in print, because it’s permanent. I would just like to pass that advice on to the Nets billboard brain trust.

Excitement In The Palace!

Box Score – Piston Powered – Detroit Bad Boys

So let’s get this straight.

The New Jersey Nets are a professional basketball team in the National Basketball Association. The Nets – this professional team – started Jordan Farmar, Sasha Vujacic, Mario West, Dan Gadzuric, and Brook Lopez. Stephen Graham was the first Net player off the bench. Travis Outlaw was the second. Johan Petro and Ben Uzoh shortly followed.

That’s the front 9 the Nets had last night. Those nine names. That is not a basketball team. this is a mockery of professional basketball.

Don’t tell me the Nets are ravaged by injuries. I get that. If you think that’s the problem, you’re missing the point. Other teams that get ravaged by injuries still have NBA-quality players on their benches. This is about the ridiculous band of nobodies that define the New Jersey Nets. Go ahead, name me a player on the Nets – other than Brook Lopez or Deron Williams – that could be a top-5 player on a solid playoff team. You can’t. For all of Anthony Morrow’s glory, he does nothing – nothing – but shoot. For all of Kris Humphries’ hustle, you can’t rely on him as a top player on your team. Jordan Farmar and Sasha Vujacic were bench players on the Lakers championship team, and wouldn’t be much higher up on another contender.

In Bill Simmons’ preseason podcast, he posited that the Nets finally had 7 NBA-quality guys on their roster, after the disaster that was last season. Now, 78 games later, I have to formally disagree.

I’ve been a Nets fan for a long time. I lived through last season. Most of us did. If you’re still around after that, you’re definitely a diehard. But last night, they trotted out a starting five that would’ve competed with that 12-70 team, probably the worst starting five that any NBA team has seen all year – hell, maybe the worst starting five of all time for a team not intentionally tanking.

Hilariously, the team on the other side seemed to actually be tanking. So don’t tell me it’s fine because the Nets almost won, either. The Nets could win the rest of their games and it just wouldn’t matter. The Pistons, on the other hand, have a draft pick to play for, and this victory over the Nets means a nearly insurmountable three-game “lead” over the Nets in the NBA standings. Every loss matters at this point of the season, thanks to those elusive ping-pong balls. When you have ping-pong balls to play for, anyway. Detroit’s probably more upset that they won than New Jersey is that they lost.

Don’t tell me this was an exciting, high-scoring affair, either. There was a lot of scoring, but it wasn’t because of smart basketball or professional execution. It was, frankly, luck. The Nets were the opposite of Butler on Monday night; while Butler created good shots and couldn’t knock them down, the Nets didn’t create good shots and still made enough to compete. The Pistons were UConn: slightly better at all facets of the game, but not nearly good enough to make this a laugher.

But when Charlie Villanueva dropped in a reverse layup at the rim, one that was completely uncontested, one that put the Pistons up 7 with 2 1/2 minutes left, it felt like a nail in the coffin. The Nets hung around, but that was endemic of the Nets’ problems the entire night: they just couldn’t stop a team desperately looking to be stopped.

I’ll give one player credit – Brook Lopez, since he absolutely balled up on offense this game. He wasn’t exactly facing a wall on defense, but he still absolutely dominated the inside, which any NBA player deserves credit for. The Nets rode him down the stretch early in the fourth, half because he was completely unstoppable, and half because no one else on the Nets can be relied upon for offense. It was definitely encouraging to see him calling for the ball on every possession.

However, all that changed when Chris Wilcox fouled out. Jason Maxiell entered for him. The Pistons switched to a zone on some possessions, completely confusing the Nets offense, and the Nets seemingly forgot how to pass him the ball. Oftentimes Ben Uzoh would just crash the lane, looking for anything, only to either take a bad shot or pass out to Vujacic, who would then… take a bad shot. When Maxiell manned Lopez up directly, the Pistons usually brought a double to shut him down.

Lopez took three shots in the final 9:49, missing all three.

He ended the game with a career-high 39 points, and played great for the most part – except for this, which kind of describes Brook Lopez’s rebounding in a nutshell:

To be clear: this was not a win to be proud of. This was a terrible basketball game, masked by decent efficiency numbers on both sides, written as a battle of victory but truly was a battle of who wanted to lose more.

But the story from last night has nothing to do with the game. The Nets could’ve won by 30 or lost by 50 and it wouldn’t have made a difference. The story is that again, for the second straight night, the Nets didn’t even bother putting the team on local television. Nobody in the New Jersey area even had the opportunity to torture their eyes by watching this tool of basketball destruction take on a slightly less depressing franchise in the Pistons.

I don’t pretend to be an expert on these things. Maybe in this crazy mixed-up world it makes sense that the Nets aren’t on local television anywhere, that Ian Eagle and Jim Spanarkel are at home spending time with their families instead of traveling to the Motor City. Or maybe they tried really, really hard to sell these two games to someone – anyone – but WGN decided that those Friends reruns were just too lucrative to pass up.

But after two straight nights of this, I feel like the Nets are just slapping me in the face. If they can’t even sell the rights to televise a game locally two nights in a row, if they trot out just one NBA-quality player in an entire 12-man rotation, how can they expect to sell the franchise to the fans? If they don’t even care enough to show the game on local television, why should people care to pay attention to them?

For all the “Experience It”‘s and “It’s All New”‘s and “Blueprint for Greatness”‘s that we’ve seen and heard about, it’s damn sure difficult to stomach it when they’re the ones helping cultivate indifference to the product.

I was able to see the game, thanks to the wonders of League Pass. I’ll describe to you the terrors that I saw. On at least three occasions, Sasha threw up a forward-leaning long two-point jumper for no reason. Collectively, the defense was atrocious. Nobody ran back in transition, nobody rotated, frankly, nobody did anything. Mario West proved again he has no business starting at the NBA level, even for the worst team in professional basketball. Petro missed a wide-open dunk under the basket. Gadzuric was absolutely faked out of his shoes more than once by Wilcox, one time leading to a particularly emphatic jam. I could describe the good – as I mentioned, Brook set Detroit on fire, Farmar & Outlaw made a bunch of shots they usually wouldn’t make, and, um… well, that’s pretty much it.

But nothing describes these Nets more definitively than your television screen, showing anything else on every single channel. Frankly, I can’t blame them. Why would they? What are you going to say to a potential buyer? Are they supposed to be excited by Travis Outlaw’s miscues? Stephen Graham’s goaltending call? Brook Lopez giving less than a you-know-what on the glass?

Maybe one day the Nets will play a late-season game that matters, maybe when they get that proper complement to Deron Williams. But like the Heat have shown us this year, you can’t expect to build a great team looking only at 1-3. When the Nets do get that next big piece – and yes, I do believe they will one day – they can’t lose sight of roster spots 3-12. Because if last night is any indication, the players they have there now just don’t matter.

Okay, so there’s no TV broadcast for the second straight night (more on that tomorrow), but the Nets seem to still be playing. “Playing” is a relative term here, they’ll be wearing uniforms and following the standard NBA rules for basketball, but at this point I’m not sure the word “playing” applies. They’ll be going up against the Detroit Pistons, who stand two games ahead of NJ in the standings. This would matter if the Nets were entering a playoff push or trying to snare a solid lottery pick. Two swings, two misses!

The Nets are also 5-33 on the road and will be playing without Deron Williams, Kris Humphries, Damion James, Sundiata Gaines, and potentially Anthony Morrow. That’s four starters. Maybe forgoing a broadcast wasn’t such a bad idea.

Here is usually where I’d make a list of things to watch out for. But if no one can watch, what’s the point? How can you watch out for something you only have a chance of listening to two people (granted, two great announcers in Chris Carrino & Tim Capstraw) talk about it?

Anyway, let’s go Nets… I think.

If the Nets win but aren’t on TV…did it actually happen? The answer is of course! The Nets picked up their 24th win of the season, beating the Timberwolves by two.

A quick recap of the game:

• With this win, the Nets crawled to just one game under .500 at home (19-20). Going forward this is obviously a number we’d like to have over .500, but with some of the dismal crowds we’ve seen this season, I’m not surprised our home court “advantage” isn’t better.
• DERON WILLIAMS. He’s had a few opportunities to make big shots for us in his early Net career and I’m glad he came through tonight, because there is no doubt Williams is a clutch player. His jumper with 1.7 seconds left was the eventual winner and there is certainly no one else I’d want to have the ball in his hands with the game on the line.
• Williams simply was the best player on the floor tonight, scoring 18 points and handing out 21 assists. But will this be the last we see of him for this season? The Nets beat was tweeting after the game that Williams will not make the trip to Detroit and is likely out for the season, but then later said he’s a possibility to play against New York on Friday.
• He’s doing all this with one hand, I can’t wait to see his production when 100% healthy.
• Brookie Monster was in full effect tonight. 13 of 23 from the field for 30 points and 12 rebounds. Great to see Brook being effective and quasi-dominant. Brook’s season has been up and down, but his play as been steadily good, especially since the addition of Williams. Plus its always a great sign when Brook puts up good rebounding numbers as that has been a huge area of concern for him this season.
• Sasha “The Machine” Vujacic grabs a career high 10 rebounds. I did not see that one coming.
• Pretty surprised Mike D’Antoni had no use for Anthony Randolph. The new T-Wolf showed plenty of energy and an array of skills in a tall and long package. Secured a double-double in 30 minutes off the bench. I would have to imagine he will be in Minnesota’s long term plans as a guy that skilled in that type of body is hard to find.

Here is the live look of Deron Williams’ go ahead jumper:

The Nets are making a formal push on their team site for Kris Humphries to be named Most Improve Player and All-Defensive Team. Sports Illustrated’s Zach Lowe sees the logic behind MIP but is a little taken aback by the All-Defensive team lobbying:

The Nets have started a campaign for Kris Humphries to win the Most Improved Player award and a spot on one of the all-defense teams. Hump has had a nice season, and if you’d prefer the Most Improved award go to a non-star, you could do worse than considering Humphries. But it comes across as shameless, rah-rah pandering when a franchise that wants to be taken seriously campaigns for Kris Humphries to make an all-defense team. Come on.

I have to agree with Zach here. I actually think it’s a shame that Hump hasn’t received more mainstream attention from a MIP perspective this season, but despite his rebounding numbers and some highlight-reel blocks, he’s still not a particularly great defensive player. The fact is, the team’s defense is still three points better with Humphries off the court. I know that’s not the end-all be-all to determine a player’s defensive worth, but watch how Humphries comes over to help in the post versus a guy like Kevin Garnett and you’ll immediately see that Humphries isn’t even in the same ballpark as your typical All-Defensive team player. I seriously hope he gets some votes as MIP, but in typical Nets marketing department fashion they’re overreaching with the All-Defensive stuff big time.

I won’t say the Nets are limping to the regular season finish line here, because I don’t think it does justice to the word limp. The Nets have been losers of 10 of their last 11 and tonight welcome the Minnesota Timberwolves to Newark. With six left to play, you’d have to imagine Avery Johnson would have liked to end this season with some momentum to carry into the off-season, although at this point that seems unlikely.

Here are some story lines to follow:

Who will actually be playing for the Nets? At the time of posting, Kris Humphries and Damion James are definitely out. Anthony Morrow and Deron Williams each did mostly watching at today’s shoot around. Morrow is a game time decision, although Williams is expected to play. Brook Lopez, Travis Outlaw and Deron Williams are going to be starting, but the other two spots are still open. All these things are subject to change, however, as the Nets injuries continue to pile up. Kevin Love and Darko Milicic did not make the trip for the Wolves.

Will anybody actually “see” this game? Ahh the joys of our games being broadcast on YES network. With the Yankees playing tonight on YES, the Nets game will not air. Therefore, unless you are at the game, your best way of catching the action live will be to listen on 1130 am. You also have the option of the following the game live on NBA.com’s TV companion. Our friend, Ben Couch (@viewfromcouch), will be live chatting.

Top of the Lottery: With neither of these team’s going to make the playoffs, the TWolves are in the dubious position of potentially having the league’s worst record, thus getting the past odds to win the NBA’s draft lottery. Right now the TWolves have 17 wins and are two up on the Cavaliers with 15. The Cavs also are in action tonight, hosting the Charlotte Bobcats.

For more on the Minnesota Timberwolves, check out A Wolf Among Wolves.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for this campaign. In a dismal end to a not-so-great season, you’ve got to focus on the positives, and Humphries has been awesome. He doesn’t deserve to be on the all-defensive team, and he probably shouldn’t win Most Improved, but hey, the team’s got to promote its stars, and he’s their most legitimate candidate for anything right now.

But of all nicknames to choose… The Incredible Hump is kind of unfortunate, no? I’ve been trying to avoid that nickname all year, and NBA.com just throws it out there like it’s no big deal.

But that doesn’t make this website unworthy of our attention. I highly suggest you watch the video, if not for Kris’s great plays, than for a blast into Digital Underground past.

Kris Humphries and Nets CEO Brett Yormark toured the Barclays Center construction site in Brooklyn yesterday. While a number of reporters seemed to focus on the possibility that other elements of the Atlantic Yards Development are nowhere close to being completed, Jason Gay of the Wall Street Journal put together a fun little article about the Nets move to Brooklyn:

But this is going to be a jarring shift for New Jersey. The Nets have long been tormented by their address; asking New Yorkers to come out to a Nets game is like asking them to help you move. Now Team Afterthought is set to plunge to the Red Hot Center of the Cultural Universe, the land of Talib Kweli and the Jonathans Ames, Lethem and Safran Foer.

Just wait: That first season, they are going to be spectacularly trendy. Everyone you know is going to go at least once. It will be weird.

I’ve said on here before that I think the Nets are going to get a two-to-three year grace period where they’re going to draw in Brooklyn no matter what – because they’ll be new and they’ll be the first professional sports team in a city that hasn’t had one in more than 50 years. Eventually, they’re going to have to be good – and maybe they will be. At least there’s another season and change to find out.