Nets Are Scorching

Lawrence Frank is the only coach in NBA history to begin his coaching career with 13 consecutive wins.

Lawrence Frank is also the only coach in NBA history to end his tenure with a team with 17 consecutive losses.

This, my friends, begins and ends the Lawrence Frank tale.

An average basketball fan looks at Lawrence Frank on the sidelines and sees something unexpected. Basketball coaches are supposed to be tall, handsome men, with powerful voices and controlled emotions. They’re supposed to be ex-players, or at least guys who have been involved in the game for years on some surface level. Basically, they’re supposed to be Phil Jackson clones.

Enter Lawrence Frank, a 5’8″ (ballpark), slightly portly, balding redhead with no playing experience outside of high school, instructing men twice his size on basketball techniques such as boxing out and proper post position. I wouldn’t be surprised if a casual fan saw him on the court and wondered if he’d wandered out there by accident. Lesson: looks can be deceiving.

Frank ended his career at 225-241, though if you discount that final awful season it’d stand at a perfectly even 225-225. It says something about a franchise when one of its best coaches couldn’t even scrape a .500 record in over 400 games, but I’d argue that the record says much about the cards the front office dealt him — particularly later in his tenure — and I think Frank played those cards about as well as he could’ve.

Though it’s certainly true that Brook Lopez was not impressed:

Lopez

Frank wasn’t a Zen master. He screamed on the bench. He cussed on live television. He cracked awkward jokes in press conferences. He fluctuated between feuding with his star players — benching Devin Harris and Vince Carter during the second half of a blowout in January of 2009 — and receiving glowing praise from them:

He wants to win. He’s an X’s and O’s guy. He works his butt off. I think sometimes he gets a little too excited. I tell him all the time to calm down, but he never listens to me. I say ‘Relax, everything will be okay.’ … I think he’s been great in my development. He’s given me life … an opportunity to show the world what I have to offer as a player. … I’d tell the truth (to Thorn). I’d tell him how I feel about it: I think he’s been great. - Vince Carter

Obviously he was very big in my development — taking the chains off, per se — and letting me go, allowing me to do some of the things I was capable of doing. I think he’s a good coach, and we’d love to have him back next year. - Devin Harris

For what it’s worth, in every full season Lawrence Frank coached in New Jersey, the Nets finished with a record at or above their pythagorean win-loss expectation: +6 in 2004-05, +4 in 2005-06, +2 in 2006-07, +7 in 2007-08, and even in 2008-09. That difference could be attributable to luck, as how coaches impact their teams statistically remains an inexact science. But by all accounts Frank, though imperfect, was a tenacious worker and a brilliant basketball mind, sometimes putting in 20-hour days at the office. It’s not surprising to me that the team did a little better than expected every year with Frank at the helm — even in that final year, the Nets were projected to decline precipitously post-Kidd and didn’t.

Frank scored a job as an analyst briefly after leaving New Jersey, then replaced Tom Thibodeau on the Boston Celtics bench as an assistant to Doc Rivers. Once the NBA season officially starts, he’ll be the lead man in Detroit, trying to turn around a broken franchise. After the way he helped Brook Lopez’s development in his rookie season, you have to like Greg Monroe’s chances.

(via Twitter user rustymk2)

No one knows what the unis will look like yet – just that Jay-Z has a hand in designing them. I suppose this is 2K12′s best guess as of now.

Update: as eagle-eyed commenter yaakov notes, this is a 2K11 mod, not a legitimate 2K12 screenshot. My apologies, and thanks to yaakov for pointing it out.

After taking Derrick Coleman first overall the 1990 NBA Draft, the Nets drafted Kenny Anderson 2nd overall a year later in 1991. The two players were supposed to form a destructive duo in the swamps of New Jersey, but instead of popping off, they imploded upon themselves, never to fulfill the potential they had coming into the NBA. Yes, that’s the case with most players, but it should’ve been different for Anderson.

In an interview with Sports Illustrated, Anderson spoke about being afraid to fail:

Anderson developed not a fear of failure but a fascination with it. “I study downfalls,” he says. “I’ve always wanted to know how a player at the top slips off that pedestal. If I look at a guy’s stats and I see he only made it to the All-Star Game once in his career, I have to ask around, I have to find out why. Did he start hanging out too late at night? Did he get a big head? Did he start playing just for the paycheck? I want to know all the different ways a guy can start to slide.”

It’s sad to see that Anderson became “that” guy, only making the All-Star Game once (1994) and fell off his game due to off-the-court issues. It was supposed to be different for Anderson… the high school phenom that became the first ever freshman to be named All-City in New York, the all-time New York high school points leader (2,621) until Sebastian Telfair came along and broke it in 2004, the smooth lefty that had amazing handle and the ability to get to the basket.

Kenny A started his NBA career missing the whole preseason and first three games of his NBA rookie year due to a contract dispute. When he eventually reported to the Nets, head coach Bill Fitch basically was ticked off at Anderson, a player he didn’t want from the beginning. So, for whatever reason you want to give, Anderson sat on the bench and learned from starter Mookie Blaylock. It was supposed to be different for Anderson.

In his second season, the legendary Chuck Daly, coach of the back-to-back NBA champion Detroit Pistons’ Bad Boys, seemingly came in and saved Anderson from failure. Before the season, the Nets traded Blaylock and gave Anderson the rock. Unfortunately, with the Nets looking good at 30-24, Anderson broke his wrist thanks to the New York Knicks’ John Starks and the Nets finished at 43-39 with Anderson off the court he was just beginning to shine on. It was supposed to be different for Anderson.

His third year saw Kenny A become an NBA All-Star, finish fourth in the league in assists (9.6; Mookie Blaylock was third with 9.7) and was the highest-scoring point guard (18.8 PPG) in the L. After such a high, Anderson fell off and only played one-and-a-half more seasons with the Nets before being traded to the Charlotte Hornets. It was then that Anderson became a journeyman, playing with the Portland Trail Blazers, Boston Celtics, Seattle SuperSonics, New Orleans Hornets, Indiana Pacers, Atlanta Hawks and Los Angeles Clippers. It was supposed to be different for Anderson.

But, it wasn’t.

Kenny A had all of the talent in the world with a spotty jumper being his main physical flaw. Mentally, he didn’t assert himself as a leader as much as he probably should have. His position on the court and production certainly warranted him leading his team. Instead, it was the enigmatic Coleman that led the way for those Nets and that led to the land of “supposed to be different” for both Anderson and the franchise.

Anderson could have been so much more than the cautionary tale he feared, but in the end, maybe he wasn’t supposed to be.

 

Besiktas JK won their first “official” game with Deron Williams yesterday, beating Dexia Mons-Hainut 78-70 in a Eurocup Qualifying Round. D-Will finished with 15 points and 9 assists, but shot only 3-15 and looked “out of shape” to Jonathon Givony of DraftExpress.

Sportando Basket dug up this video of yesterday’s game, and the “highlights” seem pretty indicative of the type of game Deron had:

To write anything about Stephon Marbury these days, you first have to address the elephant in the room: Marbury’s intense personal meltdown at the tail end of his career.

Okay, Steph lost it there for a little. (Okay, a lot.) But in all fairness, after playing for the mess known as the mid-decade New York Knicks for five long years, wouldn’t you? Marbury’s entire career was quite tumultuous, but his time with the Knicks was especially bizarre. He feuded with coaches; first Larry Brown, then Isiah Thomas and finally Mike D’Antoni, who flat-out told Marbury to stay away from the team despite still being under contract.

Then, it leaked during Isiah Thomas’ sexual harassment trial that Marbury sexually assaulted a Knicks team intern, later revealed as simply the married Marbury and the intern engaging in sexual acts in the back of a truck after an outing to a strip club. Classy!

Finally, in one more unreal flameout, Marbury broadcasted his life online — non-stop — for 24 hours, and within that time he managed to spontaneously begin crying while listening to music and eat vaseline. Part of me wishes I was kidding. Only part of me.

But luckily, all this unexpected behavior occurred after his tenure with the Nets. New Jersey acquired Stephon Marbury from the Minnesota Timberwolves in a three-team deal, which essentially swapped Sam Cassell of the Nets for Marbury.

My initial reaction to this deal? Pure excitement. After all, Marbury was a young and emerging point guard in the NBA, and at this time streetball and hip hop culture was just being ushered into the NBA. Along with Allen Iverson, nobody personified this culture the way Marbury did. His arrival gave the Nets instant credibility and amongst casual fans, the Nets now had a face that could potentially sell tickets.

From his raw talent, you could make the case that there were few players as physically gifted as Starbury. He possessed explosive quickness, the physical strength of a power forward, springlike leaping ability, ballhandling wizardry, and while his game was more about penetrating, Marbury had deep range.

Few players were as fun to watch as Starbury in his prime. Just look at some of his highlights in a Nets uniform:

• The 50-point game against the Los Angeles Lakers in 2001.
• His All-Star game winning three-pointer in the face of Jason Kidd in 2001.
• The reverse alley-oop he caught against the Timberwolves. (Make sure you watch with sound so you can hear both Jim Spanarkel and Ian Eagle just lose it.)

You knew if you watched a Nets game, it was possible you may something you’ve never seen before on a basketball court. It’s easy to forget, but Marbury had that kind of talent.

His numbers with the Nets were solid; you could just about guarantee 20+ points and 8+ assists nightly. But the problem with Stephon has never been his on-court production. Marbury’s trouble was because his attitude and leadership abilities; his shoot-first and shoot-often mentality often took his teammates out of the game and isolated them.

During Marbury’s time with the team, the Nets were not exactly the most talented bunch. Marbury made no secret to hide his displeasure with his teammates, famously writing “All Alone” on his ankle tape before games. (In all fairness, the lack of quality talent on the Nets roster during Marbury’s time is pretty staggering. Sure, Marbury didn’t make his teammates better necessarily, but take a look at the box score from Marbury’s 50-point game above and you could understand the frustration.)

Perhaps then it was poetic justice that Marbury’s run in New Jersey ended when the Nets traded him to the Suns for Jason Kidd. Kidd, the ultimate team-first, selfless point guard, forever linked with Marbury, perhaps the face for the selfish, me-first player.

In the end, knowing what we now know about Marbury, it probably never would’ve come together for him in New Jersey. Still, it’s hard to forget the feeling of possibility when I watched him play.

I’ll let his highlights speak for themselves:

 

I have to admit: Keith Van Horn influenced my life in two distinct ways. First was my decision to copy Mr. Van Horn’s knee-high sock style choice (see above) during my hoop playing career. Second, and arguably the more important influence, was my decision to become a Nets fan.

I can’t quite say for certain what led me to first start liking Van Horn. Being a guard myself, I typically tended to gravitate my rooting interests to the point guards, but for some the 6-10 forward stood out. It was 1997 and basketball was just becoming important in my life. I watched the NCAA tournament in the years prior, but by ’97 sports and basketball specifically were starting to mean something more to me.

Led by Van Horn and point guard Andre Miller, the Utah Utes made an impressive run to the Elite 8 of the 1997 NCAA tournament. Following that, Van Horn was drafted #2 overall to the Philadelphia 76ers, before being traded on draft day to the Nets in a deal that also brought over Lucious Harris.

With Van Horn being my favorite player and the Nets my hometown team, I was able to follow his career closely and thus slowly morph into not just a Van Horn fan, but a Nets fan.

Van Horn himself was a pretty flummoxing player. Due to his enormous success in college and his sweet stroke, Van Horn came into the NBA with some heavy expectations. His pre-draft workouts were scintillating: Denver Nuggets general manager Allan Bristow said Van Horn’s audition for the Nuggets was the most impressive he had seen since Larry Johnson’s workout for the Charlotte Hornets (whom Bristow coached in 1991). “He’s pretty much the complete package,” said Bristow. “He’s a great shooter, and he has great strength going to the basket.”

Due to his size, shooting stroke, and skin pigment, Van Horn was dubbed “the next (who else?) Larry Bird.”

While those expectations may have been slightly unfair, Van Horn proved in his first two seasons that he could be a force in the NBA. With a cast of veterans around him such as Sam Cassell and Kendall Gill, young Van Horn was able to concentrate his efforts on the offensive end. In his second season, Van Horn averaged 21.8 ppg, good for fifth in the league. The Nets seemed to be a team on the rise, with Van Horn at the epicenter.

That all changed in 1999 when the Nets traded Sam Cassell for young, flashy point guard Stephon Marbury. Marbury’s city bravado meshed with Van Horn’s mormon humbleness about as well as oil and water, Derrick Coleman and diets, Knicks fans and the threat of Brooklyn.

Amid other factors, Marbury’s ball domination caused Van Horn’s numbers to dip and the Nets losses to rise. Van Horn’s production in his final two seasons with the Nets never quite matched as his first three. He didn’t pan out the way we thought following those enormous expectations.

Nonetheless, Van Horn was one of the most productive Nets players ever. In his career, KVH finished in the Nets top ten in: points, field goals made, three point field goals made and attempted, free throws made and attempted, and offensive and defensive rebounds. He acted as a key cog in the 2002 Finals run and made Jayson Williams utterly swoon in his book “Loose Balls.” Seriously, just read it.

So sure, maybe Van Horn didn’t become the next Larry Bird. But there was only one Larry Bird. At the end of the day, Keith Van Horn had a solid NBA career, and a memorable Nets one.

February 19, 2008 represented a changing of the guard in New Jersey. Fed up with the Nets franchise’s inability to compete, Jason Kidd demanded a trade. Dallas owner Mark Cuban wanted Kidd back and was willing to make a decent value deal for him. Enter one of the biggest deals in Nets history, involving eight players, two draft picks, and $3 million in cash considerations — yet none of it really mattered outside of the two key pieces: Jason Kidd and Devin Harris.

That the Nets were able to get someone — anyone — for a guy who had mentally checked out of the franchise was a godsend. Too often these deals end up like salary dumps, with no talent going the other way.

Just look at how the Nets acquired Vince Carter. And then dealt Vince Carter.

But Devin Harris? Devin Harris was somebody. No one really knew what yet — he’d been hidden in Dallas’s system for the first four years of his career, and even as a starter hadn’t fully reached his potential. He was efficient, but with limited impact.

Joining the Nets gave him free rein of the offense, and finally allowed his career to take that next step. New Jersey gave Harris the opportunity to become… whatever it was Harris was supposed to become.

And what was that? I’d call Harris a trickster, a player who maximized his efficiency in unorthodox ways. In 2008-09, Harris walked a tightrope between poor shooting and efficient scoring as well as anyone. As he began to use more possessions than ever, he used his exceptional ability to draw contact and get to the free throw line at an unprecedented rate.

In 2007-08, Harris averaged 4.7 free throw attempts per game – a career high at that point. In 08-09? 8.8 attempts per game. Despite this new offensive responsibility plummeting his shooting percentages, Harris’s ability to adjust his game and become a scorer-distributor-foul magnet cemented him as one of the most valuable point guards in the league.

The team may have only won 34 games, but given the Nets roster — composed of Harris, a 32-year-old Vince Carter, a rookie Brook Lopez, and no one else — it was a surprise they even made it that far. They have Harris to thank for it.

(In case you forgot how bad that team was: the team’s fourth-best player was Keyon Dooling. Keyon Dooling! Keyon Dooling has started 84 games and has never averaged 10 points per game in his career. I like Keyon Dooling and he’s the ultimate in NBA fashion, but if he’s your seventh-best player, you’ve got problems.)

The year after is when it began to turn sour: without Carter in the backcourt to alleviate the offense, Harris began to fall off the tightrope. His free throw attempts and shooting both declined, he began drifting on defense, and his body struggled with the abuse withstood attacking the basket. Without anyone other than Brook Lopez to rely on for offense, the perfect storm reared its ugly head and the Nets barely missed historical infamy. After that season, the writing was on the wall.

When we look back on the Nets franchise 10, 15, 20 years from now, I’m not sure Harris will be known for much more than being a stopgap between the Jason Kidd era and the Deron Williams era (whether it’s one strike-shortened year or beyond). The lineage is as direct as it gets — the Nets traded Kidd for Harris, rode the Blur for a few seasons, then flipped him for D-Will. Whether it’s his fault or not, in 212 games over four seasons with Harris at the helm, the Nets made the playoffs zero times and recorded an abysmal 67-145 record. That kind of record leaves a bad memory.

But I’ll also remember his first game in New Jersey, when he came off the bench, hit his first six shots, led a 20-5 run, dunked on Andrew Bogut, and scored 20 points in 21 minutes as he led the Nets to victory. I’ll remember him dropping 41-13 on Dallas and Kidd as “THANK YOU CU-BAN!” rained from the rafters. I’ll remember him getting to the line 24 times against Detroit when no one else could score. I’ll remember him scoring 47 in a huge comeback victory against Phoenix, hitting all 17 of his free throws. I’ll remember his 31-point outburst against the Knicks in The Garden, and the time he outscored Derrick Rose 42-9 to keep the Nets in the playoff hunt. All in victories.

I’ll remember how Harris darted in and out of the lane, always looking to score, but also looking to create. I’ll remember his insane end-to-end speed as well as his ability to change direction in an instant. I’ll remember how quickly everything changed post-Kidd for this franchise, and even though I was wrong in this last one, I’ll remember feeling that the Nets had found a guy that could make us forget about Jason Kidd.

And, of course, I will always, always, always remember this.

2K Sports is set to release NBA 2K12 on October 4th, and every year as we get closer we learn more and more about the game. Most recently leaked online: overall player ratings. There’s certainly enough juice to fuel some player-related fires across the league, but here’s how it looks in New Jersey:

• Deron Williams — 90
• Brook Lopez — 76
• Kris Humphries — 70
• Sasha Vujacic — 67
• Travis Outlaw — 66
• Anthony Morrow — 64
• Jordan Farmar — 63
• Stephen Graham — 57
• Johan Petro — 52

Rookies are not included in NBA 2K12, because of this weird decision the NBA made that the best course of action is to avoid basketball at all costs. That means no MarShon Brooks or Jordan Williams until a post-insanity roster update.

A few more thoughts/observations:

• Deron Williams is the third-highest rated point guard in the game, behind Chris Paul (93) and Derrick Rose (92).
• D-Will is also ranked below Carmelo Anthony (91).
• I get that Anthony Morrow isn’t really a great player, but a 64? When Travis Outlaw is a 66, Sasha Vujacic is a 67, and Stephen Graham is even on the radar, you’d think the fact that he’s arguably the best spot-up shooter in the universe would give him a little bit of a bump.
• Speaking of Sasha, this roster must have been constructed before Sasha agreed to a binding contract overseas — unlike Farmar or D-Will, he’s not coming back.
• Brook’s rating may seem a little low, but it’s par for the course with big men – these games generally have ratings systems that favor guards and wing scorers; there’s just more skills & abilities to assess with them. And frankly, his rebounding lackumen doesn’t help.
• Just eyeballing, I think Mr. Kardashian had the biggest ratings increase of any Nets player from 2K11.
• This is a separate thought from rosters, but I hope 2K12 takes a hint from the Madden franchise and develops a method for franchise relocation in Association mode. Hopefully they take it a step further and have the Brooklyn move already planned in the game. As of now, there’s no Developer Insight for Association online, and outside of the Commissioner’s involvement in the game, they’ve kept almost all Association mode information under lock and key.