Before converting to my current Nets fandom due to a series of idiotic events that began with the hiring of Scott Layden, I was a New York Knicks fan. Save your boos and cheer on the converted. I see the high potential with the Nets and won’t revert back to rooting for the Knicks to any degree until I see the demise of, well, I won’t let this post get that dark. But fans of the New York Mets should know what I’m talking about.
In any case, even as a Knicks fan spoiled by big men Patrick Ewing, Charles Oakley, and Charles Smith (kidding!), I still gave a lot of props to Charles Linwood Williams AKA Buck Wiliams. How could you not give the man his respect? Okay, well, that was actually easy because of the aforementioned Knicks being a huge attraction thanks to Ewing’s dominance, rendering the Nets as “there’s an NBA team in New Jersey” fodder.
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It seems the only thing to talk about regarding the NBA these days is the lockout. As news travels daily from the meetings that David Stern has with the players and owners, terms like: BRI (basketball related income), luxury tax, hard and soft cap and revenue sharing are dropped on the regular.
If you don’t have someone smart enough to explain it all, it could fly way over your head. So, we decided to have on none other than Tim Donahue from the Pacers blog Eight Points, Nine Seconds to try and make sense of all the finer points of the lockout.
Tim has done extensive writing in regards to the lockout and has even made his own proposals on what he would do to resolve the situation – both are MUST READS.
So go ahead and enjoy episode four of #NASTV so that the next time someone asks you about the lockout you can sound smart in your answer.
(Also a programming note, we are going to be having our first LIVE episode of Nets Are Scorching TV on Thursday, October 20 at 7:30 pm EST to talk about our Top 44 Nets of All-Time project. So mark it on your calendars and we encourage you to drop by and participate with questions. More info to come!)
Deron Williams has settled in at #9 in ESPN.com’s NBARank, two spots below where he ranked in Zach Lowe’s top 100 list and seven spots above Eye On Basketball’s.
Deron ranks as the third-best point guard behind Derrick Rose (8th) and Chris Paul (still unranked), as the highest-ranked Nets player, and the highest-ranked player traded at the trade deadline in February. In #NBARank terms, the Nets traded #69, #138 and two picks for #9, while the Knicks traded #68, #75, #80, #220, #306, #493, and four picks for #12, #61, #338, #343, and #374.
In ESPN’s 5-on-5 debate over Deron, Chad Ford and Tom Haberstroh said Deron’s ranking is “just right,” while Kevin Arnovitz, John Krolik, and David Thorpe all decried the #9 ranking as “too high.”
Update: He’s cool with it:
In case you haven’t heard, Dwight Howard is kind of good at basketball. He becomes an unrestricted free agent in 2012, and talked about his future with Scott Raab of Esquire (h/t Tom Ziller):
SR: Do you think that the drive to represent, on an iconic level, will be a factor in your free agency? Do you see yourself in a much larger market?
DH: There’s more you can do in a bigger place. I’m stuck in a tough position because I feel like right now, where I’m at, I’ve done so much. And I just don’t know what else I can do. I can’t live for everybody else. I don’t know what decision I’m gonna make as of right now. It’s been crazy. Everybody wants me to come here, come play here, come to our team, do this. It’s a great feeling, though, to be wanted.
SR: You’re gone. I can feel it.
DH: The toughest part for me is the city — the people. They’ve got burgers named after me in Orlando, they’ve got a Web site saying, “Please stay.” I love the people in the city. I’ve literally sat on the bench with a towel on my head crying, because I feel the passion in the stands. I just think about what’s going to be best for what I want to accomplish in my life. And I don’t want that door to close on me, wherever that door is. I don’t want it to close.
SR: Just don’t do it as an hour-long ESPN special. Please.
DH: That’s not me.
Firstly, a (lot of) word(s) about “Vince Carter.”
I get that Vince Carter is super fun to make fun of. It’s easy. Vince Carter is the airline food of NBA humor. Making fun of him — for anything — is like shooting fish in a barrel. (Or letting VC shoot you out of a game, AMIRITE!?) Between his acidic departure from Toronto and the collective perception that he never fulfilled his vast potential, you’re bound to construct an easy pun and get a laugh out of using Vince Carter as the lightning rod for everything that’s wrong with basketball.
But that’s the problem — they’re not about him anymore. At some point, Vince Carter’s story stopped being about Vince Carter.
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I could talk about Rod Thorn’s charisma, the slight twang in his accent, how he always came off as an affable, upstanding man. I could talk about how Thorn arguably was the fairest Executive VP of Player Operations the league has ever seen, curtailing the violent play of the 80s and 90s as he ruled with a calm iron fist. I could talk about how his NBA playing career influenced his future in front office politics.
But those things are only a modicum of your overall impact. Truthfully, your record defines your greatness. And Rod Thorn’s front office record with the Nets is nothing short of phenomenal.
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I hope the new fans of the NBA don’t see Kenyon Martin as some old man. I mean, he’s aged in NBA years, but an old man is not what a longtime observer of K-Mart would call him, I doubt that.
My memories of Kenyon are tied to the University of Cincinnati and the New Jersey Nets, not those powder blue crème puffs out in Colorado. You know, the Denver Nuggets. I never really cared for him as a Nugget, and that probably has more to do with the fact that he hasn’t been consistently healthy in Denver. He was the first athlete ever to undergo microfracture surgery on both knees. He’s been pretty jacked up, but he never let that keep him from playing.
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