Nets Are Scorching

For years, I would go to Net games and have the same question: who is Melchionni? Five jerseys were in the rafters, and I was familiar with four of them. Dr. J., Drazen, Buck Williams? Obvious. John Williamson? Before my time, but still a name I knew. But Melchionni? I figured there probably weren’t too many Melchionni families who excelled at basketball, and thus he was probably related to recent Dukie Lee Melchionni, but that was it. So who was this “Melchionni,” and what exactly did he do to merit such an honor?

The first thing I learned was that Bill Melchionni is, in fact, Lee’s uncle. More significantly though, he was a star PG for the ABA Nets,a key reserve on the 1974 ABA Championship team, and until Jason Kidd came to East Rutherford, he was the franchise’s all-time assist leader.

This pose was taught to all players on day one of the ABA rookie symposium.

Melchionni was a three-time All Star, a two-time assists leader, named first team all-ABA in 1972, and will forever own the ABA’s second highest career APG mark.

Injuries took a serious toll on Bill Melchionni’s career, but despite retiring in 1976 at only 31 years of age, he left quite a mark in the Nets’ annals. Thirty-five years after he last took the court, Melchionni is still in the Nets’ top 10 in games, minutes, free throws, field goal attempts, and assists.

I’ll be honest, I really didn’t want to just list stats and accomplishments, but sadly, without having seen Bill Melchionni play, I just didn’t have that much to go on. There are no highlight videos to be found on YouTube, no Bill Melchionni blogs devoted to retelling the story of a scrawny kid from Pennsauken, NJ who won titles in both the NBA (with the Sixers in 1967) and ABA.

I used to wonder why Melchionni’s jersey hung from the ContinIzod rafters, but now I know. Bill Melchionni was a great point guard whose achievements need to be memorialized lest they be forgotten altogether. In that way, he’s more than just an all-time Net; he’s a metaphor for the ABA Nets, and he’s a metaphor for the ABA itself.
(since I couldn’t find any video of Bill, here’s his nephew’s most famous moment on the court).

My first memories of Kendall Gill came when I saw the lone season of Nickelodeon’s family show “My Brother & Me”.

I loved that show. It was down-home, it was natural, and I could relate to it being a young, middle-class African-American kid who loved being a kid. Also, the stars of the show loved basketball – I LOVED BASKETBALL! And so when I saw a young Kendall Gill, decked out in Nike and a pair of Air Jordan IXs for a guest spot (set in North Carolina, his former basketball home with the Charlotte Hornets), I was amazed by him and his presence. For a guy that ended up being a former top pick in the 1990 NBA Draft and pretty Jordanesque in stature, I took to the 25-year-old Gill pretty quickly.

I knew Kendall best, at first, from basketball cards, in Charlotte teal with purple, white, and green pinstripes on his jersey, but the Kendall that I authentically grew to know was a New Jersey Net. New Jersey Net Kendall was interesting because that was where I saw him flourish individually.

He was bright and shining in his first stint with the Hornets, but he was later marginalized. He got traded to the Seattle SuperSonics (rest in peace) and couldn’t get along with George Karl (as many other players seemed to find difficulty in doing), only to be marginalized again. After another difficult stint as a role player in Charlotte, Kendall came to New Jersey.

Kendall spent a total of 5½ seasons in New Jersey, the bulk of his career. He didn’t do much for their playoff chances, but to be fair, his teams were “less-than,” and he was supremely limited in carrying a basketball team.

He came from the “Next Jordan” generation, a thought-to-be-elite squadron of various basketball players whose individual and collective essence emitted a scent that seemed reminiscent of the Greatest Of All Time, but in actuality was far off. Kendall was one of those guys. He had the height and build at 6’5” & 205 pounds, but he honestly lacked the intangibles to make any team better on his own. Make no mistake — he had talent — but not otherworldly. Coupled with being in New Jersey, a team wrought with peril and disappointment, the mix was not as I wanted it to be, which would’ve been with him as an All-Star and the Nets being playoff participants.

I remember Kendall being “that guy” in those 5½ seasons, and as a stylish player. He was more of the guy who Larry Hughes wishes he could’ve been; Kendall personified “Silky Smooth.” He grew his hair out a little and had this pompadour-like hightop fade with a blond streak in his hair. He also wore these different basketball shoes that weren’t one of the traditional name. They were white with an all-red bottom, and other times, white with an all-navy bottom. What he lacked in consistent three-point range and alpha-dog leadership, he tried to make up for in a smooth, “easy-does-it” cool, often expressed when he did Jordanesque things like putting his hands on his hips, cutting to the basket off screens and taking jump stops, and gliding through the air with relative ease.

New Jersey Net Kendall was a loser in terms of wins and losses, but the manner in which he attacked the court made him a winner in my eyes.

I'm not even sure that was the style then.

Larry Brown has always been a sort of charlatan to me. I’ve never loved how he feels that his way is the “right way to play”, largely because for the vast majority of his NBA coaching career, he was a loser (and I mean that only in the sense of winning championships).

That was one reason I didn’t want to see him win in Detroit, because he could say that his way pays. And it eventually did, but that way didn’t sustain him as a title-winning coach. In the same way that if Charles Barkley won a championship, he could boast that he showed up to training camp out of shape and became a champion, I didn’t want Larry to have that same sense of entitlement.

Larry also is never satisfied. For a guy that proclaims to adore the teams that he coaches when he first signs on the dotted line, he quickly looks for another team to lead while still in bed with the organization he’s obligated to coach for, like a married man sneaking around to dimly lit clubs, just to chase that feeling -– so goes Larry Brown. Brown has coached eleven different teams in his 30-year career, and only his tenure in Philadelphia lasted more than four seasons.

So it’s no wonder that he felt a similar itch when he left UCLA for the New Jersey Nets and later bolted from the Nets after two winning seasons (and a 91-67 record) for Danny-Manningville (also known as Kansas University). After Brown accepted an offer to coach there, owner Joe Taub caught wind and decided to go the “you can’t quit, you’re fired!” route, excusing Brown from his duties with six games remaining in the 1982-83 season. As quickly as he’d come, he was gone.

For a franchises that’s known for its coulda-shoulda-wouldas, Chris Morris is someone who often gets lost in the shuffle.

A former No. 4 overall draft pick in 1988, Morris was never a liability on the court, but his game never seemed to match his athletic gifts. You won’t hear many Nets fans bemoan Morris’ play all that much, since his disappointing play quickly became overshadowed by much bigger disappointments in Derrick Coleman and Kenny Anderson. But in case anyone had forgotten, Morris was as much of a malcontent as DC and Anderson. You got to love this classic video of Morris refusing to go into a game:

And let’s not forgot about the Morris writing “Trade Me” on his sneakers during his last season with the Nets in 94-95.

And yet, here’s Morris on a list of greatest Nets of all-time, and despite all of these strikes against him, I can’t quibble too much with his selection. He lasted 7 whole seasons in New Jersey, always averaged double digits in points, was an athletic freak who could dunk with the best of them, and would have fit in perfectly during the Jason Kidd era. Imagine him streaking downcourt on a fast-break and catching an alley-oop from the PG. In a different era, not dealing with Bill Fitch and a slew of disappointing Nets teams, Morris could’ve been a different player.

In fact, when Richard Jefferson came into his own in New Jersey, one of the players he often reminded me of was Morris. It just goes to show how an era in sports changes our perceptions. Given the rotating mess the Nets have had at the SF spot over the past few seasons, I think any Nets fan would sign up in a heartbeat for 10-15 points a game, with a few highlight-reel dunks, solid rebounding and a decent defensive play or two.

Does that mean we should celebrate Morris for more than what he actually was? Of course not. But Morris isn’t the first Nets player with character issues, and he won’t be the last. At least he could play.

After splitting one season between the NBDL and NBA, Nets point guard Ben Uzoh has signed a one-year contract with Italian club Sutor Montenegro, according to Sportando. Uzoh will replace point guard Edgar Sosa in Sutor Montenegro’s lineup, after Sosa suffered a broken leg during the FIBA Americas tournament on September 5th.

Unlike most contracts signed by NBA players (and four of the other five Nets to travel abroad) in this offseason, Uzoh’s reportedly does not include an opt-out clause, meaning that he will not return to the NBA once the lockout ends.

According to the twitter feed of Sportandobasket, Italian club team Pistoia defeated Besiktas in an exhibition match today, 95-84. Deron Williams scored 18 points, and though we couldn’t watch, here are some of the more telling tweets:

End of 1st quarter: 22-21 for Pistoia. Besiktas had 7 points from Deron Williams. 8 for Dwight Hardy in Pistoia

Deron Williams got really upset because he was whistled a fould he did not make. 3rd for him. Mathis with 1/2 from the FT line

And Deron Williams finally with two more points. TO Pistoia after a loss and BJK tied the score

Deron Williams is talking with @DGHawkDC he doesnt look to happy for the ref decisions

My favorite: Deron Williams fouled by Bobby Jones after he broke his ankle

Great pick and roll between DWill and Dagli but the big man missed the shot. Jones for 52-50 for Pistoia on the other side

Deron Williams has always something to say to thr refs even if one teammate makes the foul

Williams drives in and makes two more. Timeout for Pistoia with 1:23 to play. 88 Pistoia – 78 Besiktas

Deron Williams with a 3pointer after a coast to coast 84-91. Then he fouled Jones. Looks he wants to win the game. Maybe too late

Fun fact: even though ESPN’s #NBARank has barely cracked the top 200, you can already make a full 15-man roster of Nets players (and free agents):

PG: Jordan Farmar (251), Sundiata Gaines (402), Ben Uzoh (443), Orien Greene (484)
SG: Anthony Morrow (209), Marshon Brooks (347), Mario West (358), Quinton Ross (372)*
SF: Travis Outlaw (271), Damion James (352), Stephen Graham (443)
PF: Brandan Wright (305)
C: Dan Gadzuric (356), Johan Petro (373), Jordan Williams (475)

*-waived on March 31

This would be funnier if it didn’t look eerily like a late March rotation.

Left off this list are Brook Lopez (who has yet to be listed), Deron Williams (same), Kris Humphries (same, as a free agent), and Sasha Vujacic (who was not included in voting due to his binding overseas commitment). Only one of the Nets mentioned – Anthony Morrow – is in the top half of the 500-player list.

While I think the rankings undervalue a few of these guys — to me, the rookies leap out, and Morrow seems a shade low — for the most part, this seems accurate. And that’s scary, especially with your #1 angling for an improved roster.

For Episode 3 of #NASTV, Devin and I are joined by Nick Gibson and Sam Meyerkopf, the creators of Euroleague Adventures. Nick and Sam have been killing it daily and are a must-follow on Twitter @Euro_Adventures.

With the Eurobasket tournament heating up, the boys from ELA talk to us about all things Eurobasket, including: Bojan Bogdanovic’s performance in the tournament (Part 1), the differences in FIBA play and NBA play (Part 2), and of course, what is any high-level discussion on European hoops without a little Ricky Rubio bashing (which you can find plenty of in Part 3)?

Enjoy the episode and feel free to leave comments with the hashtag, #NASTV.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3: