The Springfield Armor will hold a press conference tomorrow at 2 P.M. to unveil their new head coach. Jeff Thomas of The Republican speculated that former Idaho Stampede coach Bob MacKinnon will replace Dee Brown, though there is no confirmation.
Jersey connection: Brown has reportedly accepted an offer to assist former Nets coach Lawrence Frank in Detroit.
Close your eyes and try to think of a memorable moment in Jason Collins’ Nets career. Maybe an emphatic dunk, or a clutch shot, or a key block of an opponent. What do you see? If your eyes are closed, you should see nothing. And if you open them, you’re probably still seeing nothing.
That’s what happens when you have a career Player Efficiency Rating (7.6) that matches your vertical leap. Search Jason Collins on YouTube, and outside of some mocking, “Jason Collins Dunks!” or “Jason Collins Blocks a Shot!” videos, you’re not going to find any remixes or fan videos. I guess there just isn’t a high demand of videos showcasing a player putting a solid body on an offensive player in the post.
Still, Collins is worth celebration. How could there be a “Top Nets” list without him? Did Collins ever have outrageous stats during his Nets career? No. He was not on the floor to score, and his two primary coaches, Byron Scott and Lawrence Frank, considered him a “defensive specialist,” despite producing middling to poor rebounding and blocks numbers. Some numbers even argued that Collins’s defensive impact ranked among the best in the league.
Twin’s game was not about stats, or at least that’s what everyone would have you believe. He’s arguably a benefactor of being in the right place at the right time, but he was a model of consistency nonetheless. In his 2001-02 rookie season, he was the primary back-up big man on a team that made its first-ever NBA Finals, and in 2002-03 he was the starting center for a Nets team that made it to its second finals. Twin went on to be the main guy in the middle for a team that consistently made the postseason, and reached the Eastern Conference semifinals three additional times.
Granted, all of those teams were Jason Kidd and Kenyon Martin’s (and later Vince Carter’s). But Collins always came to work ready to play. We’ll never know how the Nets would have fared against the likes of Shaquille O’Neal or Tim Duncan if they had a Center who could put the ball in the hoop, like a Brook Lopez. But you can’t fight how much Twin meant to those Nets playoff teams. Make no mistake, he belongs on this list. Just take it from his coach:
The 80s weren’t exactly banner years for the New Jersey Nets, but Otis Birdsong’s jump shot was a beautiful sight to behold during the era. Birdsong is the Ray Allen equivalent to the Nets franchise (which gives you an idea of the Celtics history compared with the Nets), and his nearly 50% field goal percentage during his seven seasons in New Jersey is almost unimaginable for any perimeter player on the Nets today.
When Birdsong was drafted by the Kansas City Kings as the second pick in the 1977 draft, many thought that he would become a perennial All-Star. However, after a solid run with the Kings that landed him three All-Star selections in 4 seasons, the injury bug plagued him. Despite arguably being the Nets’ best scorer after Vince Carter and Dr. J, Birdsong suffered numerous injuries, including particularly bad ones to his pelvis and his shooting hand. Despite his ailments, Birdsong remained a constant in an era of uncertainty, and was a gift to Nets fans during his time in New Jersey.
Birdsong represents the first sure thing the Nets acquired after the ABA-NBA merger. The franchise, rocked by Dr. J’s contract dispute, rode Birdsong during the mourning. In that sense, Birdsong played the role of Vince Carter in the 09-10 season, a semi-star who could be touted as a star in the eyes of whatever fans filled up the arena.
In short, did Birdsong live up to expectations as the second pick in the ’77 draft, the same draft that Bernard King went 7th)? Not exactly. However, Birdsong filled his role and lays claim to one of the sweetest shots in NBA history.
Luke had acquired a tough-guy reputation when he decked 7-foot-2 strongman Artis Gilmore with one punch in an ABA game before both became NBA players. I urged him to establish that same persona in the NBA. Luke loved the role. He had every Blazer’s back. If an opposing player had a problem with any Blazer, he had to deal with Luke first.
Dr. Jack Ramsay, “Saying goodbye to ‘The Intimidator’“
Dr. Jack wrote that about Maurice Lucas shortly after Lucas prematurely passed away in 2010, leaving behind his wife, his three children, and a legacy of hard work, determination, and insatiable desire to intimidate and overpower opponents. The yin to Bill Walton’s yang in his days in Portland, Lucas led the 1977 NBA Champion Trailblazers with 20.2 points per game, adding 11.4 rebounds and nearly three assists.
Lucas was Charles Oakley before Charles Oakley, the poster boy (literally – that picture is SI’s 1977 Halloween cover) for the wave of tough black players that entered the league in the 70s, changing the culture of the NBA. The antithesis to the game that preceded him and the game we know today, Lucas would assuredly rack up technical fouls at an unheard rate had he come along 30 years later. (Perhaps he’d be remembered more fondly in Nets lore had he taken Kenyon Martin’s position in 2000, spending his prime years fighting anyone who tried to mess with Jason Kidd or Kerry Kittles.)
“A lot of people think I’m just one of these mean guys. Well, I just play rough. That’s the way you play when you’re in my game. … I don’t like to be the policeman. I’m a firm believer in ‘you gotta fight your own battles.’ Of course, I have to protect Bill [Walton] sometimes because guys are always taking shots at him. We won’t fight, we’ll just set a guy up and make a little sandwich out of him—POW!—wake him up. … To tell you the truth, I don’t really know which players are dirty, because a lot of cats don’t do to me what they do to everybody else…which I like.”
Maurice Lucas, “‘nobody, But Nobody, Is Going To Hurt My Teammates“
Despite his penchant for physicality, he wasn’t Rasheed Wallace; Lucas considered himself a protector and mentor as much as an enforcer. Ruthlessly, he cared, and his message rang league-wide – Lucas’s famous run-ins with giants Gilmore and Darryl Dawkins solidified his reputation as someone not afraid to knock your head off if he thought you needed to learn a lesson.
“Here was a guy, one of best in the game, who knows this young buck is coming in to take his position,” [Buck] Williams added. “But he was the kind of guy who looked out for the young, the weak and women; he had that mentality. I became an All-Star because of his tutelage.”
There was a price, though, usually paid with sore ribs. “Some days, I didn’t want to come to practice.”
Roy S. Johnson, “The NBA Misses Maurice Lucas
Williams & Lucas never shared a court together professionally – Lucas was gone as quickly as he came, sent to New York in what essentially amounted to a sign-and-trade for Ray Williams. I do wonder if Buck’s career would’ve taken off had Lucas stuck around, instead of topping off at “very good” from day one.
He left few memories with New Jersey, just 90 games of solid 15-9 ball on a team that ultimately didn’t matter. New Jersey wasted his protector/enforcer gene; with nobody on the team worth targeting, Lucas had little to fight for. Lucas’s tenure in New Jersey was nothing more than a stop-off in his rocky career, one that never rekindled the flame he first lit with Portland. A star in that championship year, his heart belonged to Portland – the city where he returned in his final professional season, eventually signing on as an assistant coach in 2005.
Lucas played well enough in his limited time to warrant inclusion to this series. But no one remembers Maurice Lucas as a New Jersey Net. Frankly, it’d be wrong if you did.
What up, Kid?
240 games, 2016 points (8.4), 1540 rebounds (6.4), 393 assists (1.6), 219 steals (0.9), 328 blocks (1.5), 438 FG%, .734 FT%, .178 3P%, 12.3 PER
Enforcer. Blue Collar. Winner.
Perhaps its apropos to kick off a list about the top Nets of all-time with a guy like PJ Brown, a solid yet unspectacular role player who made more of a name for himself after he left New Jersey. I would wager in a list of the top Miami Heat players of all-time, Brown would figure higher than #44, though no one is mistaking him with Alonzo Mourning or Dwyane Wade.
Could Brown lead you a championship? No. But was he one of those glue guys that helped to hold good times together? He was a bench player on the 2008 Championship Boston Celtics team, but he was also a three-time all-defensive second-teamer; twice with perennial Eastern Conference powerhouse Miami, and once with an above average Charlotte Hornets team.
As for his career with the Nets – when Brown made his debut in 1993, I remembered thinking “who was this tall lanky kid with the Kid ‘N Play haircut?” He would never truly open my eyes, but after putting up 8-10 points and 8-10 rebounds with regularity throughout the first few months of the season, Brown quietly earned a spot in the inaugural Rookie Game during All-Star weekend. Then, all of a sudden, Brown earned acknowledgement from Nets fans.
Brown was the rare case of an unheralded draft pick actually producing a solid rotation player for the Nets organization. Picked 29th overall in the second round of the 1992 NBA Draft, Brown elected to spend the following season in Greece, making it seem like it was yet another wasted draft pick for the Nets. But he did eventually sign on to play for the Nets, and he surprisingly earned a spot in coach Chuck Daly’s rotation right away – probably because of his workmanlike, defense-first approach. I’ve heard rumors that Daly was one of those coaches who preferred his teams played defense.
If only Brown could have made enemies with the New York Knicks while he played in the swamp – he would have been the stuff of Jersey legends. Instead, Brown made the biggest splash of his career when he was wearing a Miami uniform and he tossed Knicks PG Charlie Ward into the courtside seats section of the arena, leading to a brawl between the two teams that resulted in a host of player suspensions, likely costing the Knicks a trip to the Eastern Conference Finals in 1997. Oh boo-hoo, no one was beating the Bulls that season, no matter what you tell yourself Knicks fans.
Instead, Brown’s three seasons in New Jersey were just an obscure prelude to an otherwise productive NBA career. And his inclusion on this list is a reminder that he’s the kind of player the Nets could have used more of through their history.
We love the Nets here. Maybe a little too much. (Okay, definitely too much.) But chances are if you’re reading this, you do too. Out of that love, seven of us here at Nets are Scorching pooled our thoughts together and came out with a list: the top 44 New Jersey Nets of all time.
Why 44, you ask? Blame Derrick Coleman, everything is his fault anyway. Also, the Nets have been in existence (ABA included) for 44 seasons. Also, round numbers suck. Do you need more reasons?
(Okay, one more: 44 is a “happy number.” We’re all about happiness here. Did I mention Barack Obama is our 44th President?)
Starting today and continuing over the next month and a half, we’ll be counting from #44 (I’ll give it away – it’s P.J. Brown) all the way down to #1 (I’ll give it away – it’s not P.J. Brown). There will be some old Nets you may have forgotten, and some new ones still fresh. (The only requirement: you need to have been with the organization for at least one season. So no Deron Williams yet.)
Happy reading.
In playing his second game for Besiktas, Deron Williams scored 21 points and dished out 5 assists. Not a bad showing, without knowing the playbook entirely mind you.
However, Despite a stellar performance from their star, Besiktas fell to the Russian team Spartak 76-67 in an exhibition. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
Williams later tweeted that he fell on his wrist during the game, but felt no pain afterwards. Williams’ right wrist had been a problem late last season, causing him to miss 13 of the Nets’ final 25 games. He underwent surgery on the wrist this summer, and it looks like he is already back up to full speed. However, more scares like this can only be troublesome. If Williams does hurt the wrist that took so long to repair, I can only ask “was it worth it?”
Deron Williams notched 14 points 6 assists, and 8 rebounds in just 18 minutes as Besiktas defeated Italy’s Montepaschi Siena in an exhibition match, 93-91. The matchup was D-Will’s first live basketball (exhibition or otherwise) since agreeing to terms with Besiktas back in July.
The first “official” Besiktas matchup isn’t scheduled until September 27th, but Deron nonetheless got right to work – he only landed in Turkey two days ago.