Nets Are Scorching

One of the oft-cited casualties of an NBA lockout is the arena workers; whether you consider them a symbol writers latch onto as rhetoric, or real, live bodies that scrape for money and feel the lockout sting (and both are true), the idea remains that human beings with five-figure salaries are the forgotten children as human beings with 7-10 figure salaries bicker over splitting their pot.

However, if the players decide to come through on their idea to construct their own league, there’s one arena where the workers may end up seeing some work: the Prudential Center in Newark, alleged New Jersey Nets home for one more year.

(I)f either Anthony or Stoudemire gets his wish and the locked out players need a place to play, the Prudential Center would be willing to host them, according to Robert Sommer, a spokesman for the four-year-old Newark arena.

“We can do it,” Sommer said of hosting barnstorming NBA players in games. “And we would love to host Carmelo.”

The Nets are renting dates at Prudential Center, which is controlled by the NHL’s Devils, for the 2011-12 season before a planned move to Brooklyn and the new Barclays Center next fall. So, while a building like Madison Square Garden — which is owned by the people who own the Knicks — wouldn’t stage games featuring locked-out NBA players, the Prudential Center is free to entertain any act, or show, that can pay the rent.

Of course, there are many hurdles that would need to be cleared to get any kind of game into the Prudential Center. The players would need to take care of all their insurance needs and a whole bunch of other logistical matters, and there is also the question of whether the players would need a building as big as the Rock. So far, the exhibitions the NBA players have taken part in are being held in small college gyms. But if the lockout drags on, could a game featuring Anthony, Stoudemire, perhaps LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Kevin Durant and other big names draw enough to warrant holding it in an 18,000-seat arena?

Let me answer your question, Colin Stephension: Yes.

If there’s no basketball in the entire country, do you really think a trip on the PATH train to Newark is going to deter fans from watching (potentially) LeBron, Wade, Stoudemire, Durant, et al? I know it’s Newark, where the basketball product normally borders on the unwatchable and the fanbase is ill-prepared to watch live games. But this isn’t the Nets we’re talking about, this is the best players in the world. And Carmelo Anthony.

Side note: it is kind of upsetting that a Lockout League would most likely only benefit the players that don’t really need the help in the first place. I’ll bet Jordan Williams doesn’t get any roster invites, yet he’s still never seen an NBA paycheck.

Even so, I’m kind of rooting for this to happen now. It’d probably be the best basketball we’d see in Newark all year.

Byron Scott may not have had Lawrence Frank’s longevity, Chuck Daly’s career resume, or the stunning blazer/shirt combinations of Kiki Vandeweghe, but he’s done one thing that no other franchise coach has been able to accomplish, or even come relatively closing to accomplishing: he brought the Nets to back-to-back NBA Finals appearances.
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In the 2001 NBA draft, the Nets acquired Richard Jefferson via trade with the Houston Rockets. Jefferson was a 6-7 small forward from the University of Arizona, fresh off a run to the NCAA National Championship game. Little did we know we were acquiring a major building block for even the immediate future.

Once the Nets made the trade for Jason Kidd, they instantly became a fast-break team and Jefferson was the type of thoroughbred needed to run alongside Kidd.
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The Nets have six games cancelled: @ Washington, vs. Detroit, vs. Milwaukee, vs. Dallas, at Miami, and vs. Minnesota, though everything could get rescheduled in an instant. That’s six winnable games! (Well, they are now.)

The Nets opener is now penned for November 16th, against Oklahoma City… if you believe in that sort of thing. Honestly, I thought they’d figure it out this weekend. I thought these recent meetings meant they understood the urgency and both sides would sacrifice; they’ve been getting together at odd hours for long sessions, which is normally a preclude to an 11th-hour victory. But apparently the biggest issue of all (the BRI split) hasn’t even been seriously discussed.

Until then, feel free to indulge yourself in Besiktas news. Hope you can read Turkish.

Warren Little/Getty Images Europe

When the New Jersey Nets drafted Brook Lopez 10^th in the 2008 NBA Draft, he signified a new direction for the franchise. For the first time, they’d landed a 7-footer that deftly combined legitimate post moves, a true mean streak, and a love of comic books. Lopez commandeered a position relinquished by Nenad Krstic after his awful ACL injury and taken by Josh “By Default” Boone. But more importantly, he at least signified something, a something that draft picks Sean Williams, Marcus Williams, Antoine Wright, et al had failed to fulfill. Lopez was the first Nets pick in years I pumped my fist and whooped at while watching the draft. He was the cornerstone, the future. He mattered.
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As I recovered from my post-Derrick Coleman/Kenny Anderson-induced melancholy, the Nets drafted a lanky, speedy kid from Villanova University in 1996 who quickly became my then-favorite player. I knew Kerry Kittles well from his play in the Big East Conference. Granted Allen Iverson and Ray Allen were the sexier names from the conference in the 1996 Draft class, but the Nets were an organization that had been missing that sharp-shooting, defensive-minded SG ever since Drazen Petrovic died. When mock drafts predicted that Kittles would be the Nets likely pick, I passionately rooted for that outcome, hoping the team wouldn’t be seduced by the bigger unknown quantity in Kobe Bryant (who, rumor has it, was supposed to be drafted by the Nets but John Calipari was inevitably talked out of it).

Granted, it wouldn’t take long for hindsight to prove that the Nets blew yet another opportunity – imagine what they could have done with Bryant all these years (my guess is there would have been at least a few NBA championships in New Jersey)? But despite the front office’s massive miscalculation, I’ll never hold it against Kittles, who quietly evolved into one of the greatest Nets of all-time.

Kittles never put up the flashy numbers of a Rick Barry, and never carried a team on his back the way Vince Carter and Drazen Petrovic did, but Kittles essentially survived two different eras of Nets basketball during his time in NJ. Despite fighting chronic knee problems that cost him his 2000-01 season and took out chunks of numerous other seasons, Kittles was a model of consistency and stability over the course of his seven seasons unsurpassed by anyone else on this list. Yes, I’m essentially praising a player for being perfectly acceptable offensively – 13-15 points a game, a few steals, 35-40 percent shooting from three – because he did it over a comparatively longer period of time and because the guy never did anything to shame himself or the franchise. When you’re talking about the Nets and their history of busted potential, too-short-term dances with glory, or just out-and-out head cases, Kittles stands about as far apart from that group than almost anyone else.

And for the record, it’s not like Kittles was a bad player either. During his sophomore campaign, while Keith Van Horn got the headlines, and Jayson Williams made the all-star team, Kittles put up a 17.2 ppg, 42 3P% season, all while playing steady defense and taking care of the ball. Of course, his frail frame made him susceptible to injury, and maybe the prodding of a certain coach who I’ve vowed to despise for the remainder of hoops-fandom led to his body breaking down more than it should have:

“Here’s what it is,” Calipari said. “The question is: Do you want to be a nice two guard, or do you want to be a special player? The only way he can be special, and I believe he will be special, is if you’re mentally and physically tough enough to get to the playoffs, to make big plays. You have to make dagger shots, have the mentality of a killer.”

And here’s what happened – while Jason Kidd (deservedly) gets the bulk of the credit for the Nets playoff run during the 2001-02 and 02-03 seasons, the Nets may have never even escaped the first round of the playoffs in ’02 without a “dagger” shot from Kittles. After losing Game 1 against the Pacers at home, the Nets needed to take a game at the Conseco Fieldhouse in Indiana in order to prove that their surprisingly magical regular season was not all for naught. After being tortured by Reggie Miller throughout the game, and essentially being benched by coach Byron Scott for the bulk of the fourth quarter, Kittles went back in with about 5 minutes to play and with 22.5 seconds, hit a three-pointer that put the Nets up 4, enough of a cushion to survive yet another last-second push by Miller.

”For this franchise and for this season the way we’ve been playing, that was the biggest shot that I’ve been associated with,” Scott said after the game. ”That was the biggest shot that I’ve seen in a long, long time.”

You have to wonder what Nets basketball would have been like in the early 2000s without that Kittles shot. If the Nets lose Game 3, they likely lose the series and all of the talk the subsequent season would have centered on a young, inexperienced team, with a talented yet combustible point guard, being unable to rise to the occasion when it mattered most. And it was the guy who survived, Calipari, Don Casey, Stephon Marbury, the shockingly disappointing 1999 season, and a debilitating knee injury who delivered for the Nets. How can he not be regarded as a bit of a folk hero, even as Kobe enters the “greatest of all-time” debate?

When the Nets went into yard sale mode after the 2003-04 season, people looked to the departure of Kenyon Martin as the heart and soul of the Nets being gutted, but I didn’t become truly disenchanted as a fan until the team unload Kittles to the Clippers for cash and a couple of deflated basketballs and broken rims. While Kmart was a lynchpin, I could understand not wanting to give him the money he wanted and as time wore on, and Martin’s knee issues became chronic, the Nets were vindicated by that decision. But Kittles, despite having an injury plagued season after he left the Nets himself, should have retired as a Net. The fact that he’s working in the organization’s front office proves his commitment to the organization. My guess is after their respective retirements, Kidd or Martin will not be visiting high schools in Newark with Billy King. Kittles never faked a migraine, demanded a max salary, taped “trade me” on his sneakers, or had his car break down on a weekly basis on his way to practice. Instead, he has always been committed to being a Net, and for that, he will always be a team legend in my mind.

Take a look at the 2011 free agency landscape, and it’s hard not to be underwhelmed. The top guy (Nene) is a B-lister, a 7-footer who’s not particularly sound defensively and doesn’t rebound well. Despite the dearth of talent, Chris Bernucca of Chris Sheridan’s SheridanHoops blog takes a look at the “best fit” for the top 20 free agents in this offseason (whenever it starts), and Bernucca mentions the Nets with four players: Nets FA Kris Humphries, Jazz FA Andrei Kirilenko, Wizards FA Jamal Crawford, and Celtics RFA Jeff Green.

According to Bernucca, the Nets “really can’t chance letting (Humphries) walk unless they bag a bigger prize,” though if they throw their cap space at Jeff Green, there’s no need to keep Humphries. He adds that Crawford could fill a hole in NJ at shooting guard, and that Kirilenko would fit best once the Nets fill their SG need. He didn’t include the Nets as players for Nene or David West, despite prior rumors to the contrary.

The Nets are gearing up for their Brooklyn opening in 2012, so it doesn’t make much sense for the Nets to spend a ton in this free agency class. The only way I see plausible movement is if amnesty becomes a reality; then the Nets can reallocate the $7 million per year in cap space owed to Travis Outlaw to someone like Kirilenko or Green. Crawford doesn’t make much sense to me as anything but a short-term rental — he’s fun, but he’s a 31-year-old guard that relies on his quickness coming off a down year. Given that the Nets already have a floor spacer in Anthony Morrow and an (albeit unproven) isolation scorer in MarShon Brooks, adding Crawford seems superfluous.

So much of the Nets’ identity revolves around the couldas.

Many of the players listed thus far barely scratched the surface of their assumed potential. Whether injury, carelessness, cocaine, or whoop-de-damn-doism, the franchise’s history is littered with high draft picks, underwhelming overall production, and careers cut short by fate (and “Asher Roth“).

Nenad. DC. Kenny. Pearl. Marbury. KVH. Micheal Ray. More unfulfilled-potential guys to come in the later weeks (I’m sure you can guess a few).

And Jayson.

In his case, it was out of his hands; that horrific collision with Stephon Marbury happened so fast. Before that moment, Jayson was a very talented player, one that didn’t really get a chance to show off that talent until his sixth year in the league. Jayson was extraordinarily strong, often saying he could out-bench anyone in the league (except Kevin Willis), and had the Dwight Howard shoulders before Dwight Howard had the Dwight Howard shoulders.

But just as importantly, he was loads of fun. Thinking about Jayson made me revisit his “autobiography,” Loose Balls. (“Autobiography” is in quotations because the book, like most others written by athletes, was co-written “with Steve Friedman,” which essentially means Jayson probably scribbled some nonsense and Friedman edited it down to a palatable level. But I digress.)

I love that book. It’s also one of the first basketball books I’d ever read cover-to-cover. Maybe it’s the adolescent in me talking, but I was excited to read a basketball player’s take on sex, drugs, racism, and everything else that goes into being rich and famous for your athletic prowess. But even after rereading it, it’s still fantastic, even though Jayson isn’t the most eloquent writer (which only makes me wonder how stilted the language was before Steve got to it).

Here’s one of his many stories:

I came out of the game, and Yinka (Dare), who was on the bench, asked me, “Jay-son” — he always called me Jay-son, like it was two words — “what does the ‘C’ on Christian Laettner’s jersey stand for?”

I’m thinking, Damn, Yinka Dare should know that the “C” on Christian Laettner’s jersey stands for — it’s for “Captain,” everybody knows that. But I didn’t say anything. I just looked over at him and thought, Let me figure this brother out.

So I say, “Yinka, what do you think the ‘C’ on Christian Laettner’s jersey stands for?”

He looks over at Laettner, who’s a white guy, and he looks back at me, and Yinka goes, “‘Caucasian’?”

We’re losing, so I can’t be laughing on the bench. I put my head down, got a towel over my face. And then Benoit Benjamin, another NBA genius on the Nets’ bench, looks over at me and he says, “Wooo, child. That Yinka Dare sure is silly, isn’t he? Everyone knows ‘caucasian’ starts with a ‘k’.”

There’s a few others, including Chris Morris asking a pianist to “play some Picasso,” and a particularly graphic story about assistant coach Clifford Ray and thunder, lightning, and rain, but I’ll let you find those yourself.

Jayson wasn’t just a writer, though. He was one of the most tenacious rebounders of his era, a guy that chased down offensive boards with reckless abandon. In his final full season — his only one as a starter, really — Jayson averaged 6.8 offensive rebounds per game, leading the NBA by a wide margin in offensive rebounding percentage and ranking second to Dennis Rodman in total rebounding percentage. In that season, Jayson actually snared more offensive rebounds (443) than defensive (440).

Also in that season, Jayson ranked second in the NBA in offensive rating to John Stockton, producing 121 points per 100 possessions. That number remains an all-time Nets record.

I won’t dwell on Jayson’s career-ending injury, nor on the fact that he’s currently serving a prison sentence for accidentally killing his limo driver. (Yup, I really did just gloss over it that fast.) But imagine he’d recovered 100% from injury in time for, say, the 2000-2001 season. The Nets still get Kidd, still draft K-Mart, and complement those two with Kittles, Van Horn, and Jayson. That doesn’t swing the Finals against the Lakers, but if a couple breaks go the right way, is a victory over the Spurs the year after that farfetched? Remember, the Nets stole Game 2 in San Antonio and were ahead going into the fourth quarter in Game 3 (and in Game 6, but we’ll talk about that colossal disappointment another day). With Jayson Williams grabbing every offensive board in sight, extended possessions with Jason Kidd at the helm can only yield positive results.

Unfortunately, we’ll never know what difference he could have made. He, like so many others to don a Nets uniform, didn’t get a chance to tell his full story. But save the physical pain of its end (and the whole “negligently-killing-your-driver” thing), I’d bet 90% of NBA players would take Jayson’s career over their own.