Nets Are Scorching

The Derrick I’m most familiar with was the guy in Philadelphia. This DC wore the black uniform with wide-set sleeves. The jersey looks like a muscle tank. That Derrick was older, bigger, calmer, and more mature (I’m guessing). He was a good player, but it was fairly visible that he wasn’t what he could’ve been, or even what he once was.

It’s hard for me to look or even think about Derrick Coleman now and not think about Rasheed Wallace. They weren’t that far apart in skill level or their peak athleticism. Rasheed was freakish, but Derrick had an understated freak in his own game. The jump shots, the ability to shoot from long-range, the power to bang and score with ease in the post, the knack for grabbing boards (when he felt like it, in Derrick’s case)… they were similar in style and court philosophy. But this isn’t about Rasheed. This about DC.

I’m not going to go into great detail about what he was when he was young and what potential he had –- that’ll just be an exercise in nostalgic disappointment and mild depression. I want to emphasize that for all of what Derrick Coleman could have become as a player (the Hall of Fame wasn’t out of reach for him, at his sustained best), he was nonetheless a very good player. He was a talent, one that often played for teams that persistently dwelled in mediocrity; and he, like many players, wasn’t happy playing and not winning. He enjoyed the paycheck, sure, but losing wears on talented players who know winning as their experience.

I’m not going to begrudge Derrick of the credit he’s owed as a talented player in the league. He was an All-Star in 1994. He was a consistent 20-10 player in his five years in New Jersey. He put up some great numbers and was a valued part of the Philadelphia 76ers when they were beginning to hit their stride. I mean, I wanted his Nets jersey, and to me, that counts for something.

The legacy of Derrick Coleman inevitably rests on what he didn’t do, at least in a macro sense. But the truth of the matter is, Derrick Coleman was usually good, at times really, really good, and in select moments, great. Coleman may never have lived up to those lofty expectations — for multiple reasons, many his own undoing — but he nonetheless put together a good career. And, he was a New Jersey Net. Most players don’t get even that opportunity.

...Let's just be glad this never happened.

Along with a thriving urban community and Russian base, Brooklyn — soon the home of you-know-who — has become a haven for “hipsters,” whatever that term means today, or yesterday, or 20 years ago, depending on how cool you are. If you’re a Nets fan now, you’re currently in the process of liking them before they’re cool, which gives you additional indie cred for the next time you pour out a lil’ PBR at the footsteps of the Barclays Center site.

Though the retro jersey ranks just above Wes Anderson films and just below calling the dude who pours my coffee into a foam cup a “barista” in hipster circles, Kurt Snibbe of Page 2 had a few more ideas on how the Nets can continue to maximize their hipster b-ball cred through their marketing.

Also, In this man’s humble opinion, someone should paint that last one on Stephen Graham’s face.

The amazing Bernard King began his career with the New Jersey Nets, drafted seventh overall in the 1977 NBA Draft from the University of Tennessee. Despite averaging 24.2 points, 9.5 rebounds, 2.4 assists and 1.5 steals in 79 games his rookie season, King lost the NBA Rookie of the Year award to Walter Davis who put up the same number of points, 6.0 rebounds, 3.4 assists and 1.4 steals. Someone was robbed!

Okay, it was close and Marques Johnson of the Milwaukee Bucks could have also made a case (19.5 points, 10.6 rebounds, 2.4 assists, 1.2 steals and 1.3 blocks), but the robbery I’m talking about actually took place a year later when the Nets traded King to the Utah Jazz for Rich Kelley after King’s second season with the team (21.6 points, 8.7 rebounds, 3.6 assists, 1.4 steals in 82 games). Kelley finished with 7.6 points, 7.0 rebounds, 2.6 assists, 0.9 steals and 0.9 blocks for his 11-year career and stuck around New Jersey for a whole 57 games.

Regardless, King is known for being one of the New York Knicks’ legendary players and rightly so. In only four seasons with the Knicks, King put up some spectacular performances and was basically unstoppable by other NBA players. He led the league in scoring for the 1984-85 (32.9 PPG). Around these parts, King will always be a Knick and the only thing that could stop him was his own body; King only played six games in his last season with the Knicks in 1986-87 after missing the whole 1985-86 season because of a torn ACL.

If King had found his NBA glory a few decades later with the Nets, imagine how wild and crazy Barclays Center would be as the Brooklyn-born and Fort Hamilton high school product King was announced during starting line-ups. It would trump anything King ever did with the Knicks. Alas, woulda, shoulda, coulda. However, it would have been nice if King stayed with the Nets after two excellent opening NBA seasons, especially when you consider that Kelley didn’t stay long or made his presence felt while with the Nets. He could have been (to a much lesser degree), the Nets’ new Dr. J, but in the NBA.

I take it back… the Nets weren’t robbed. The fans were… again.

Rick Barry was one of the game’s best pure SFs of all-time – a man who possessed deadly accuracy from all over the court, had court vision, could rebound, played defense tenaciously and had a will to win that is often nonexistent in today’s athletes.

He’s also, and perhaps most notably, known as one of the game’s biggest jerks. From Tony Kornheiser’s brilliant 1983 profile of Barry in Sports Illustrated:

“You’ll never find a bunch of players sitting around talking about the good old days with Rick,” says Ken Macker, the Warriors’ executive vice-president. “His teammates and his opponents generally and thoroughly detested him.” And while that seems an extreme judgment, influenced by Macker’s loyalty to his boss, Franklin Mieuli, even Barry’s defenders concede its essential truth. John Roche, a friend and teammate of Barry’s on the Nets, says, “Many players resented Rick. The way Rick conducted himself could be construed as implying superiority. But I always felt it was unintentional. People misread Rick. Most people admire competitiveness. But apparently Rick’s took forms that angered people.” Another friend, the Spurs’ Billy Paultz, who played with Barry on the Nets and the Rockets, says, “If you got to know Rick you’d have realized what a good guy he was. But around the league they thought of him as the most arrogant guy ever. I couldn’t believe it. Half the players disliked Rick. The other half hated him.”

While a select few have found nearly every selection of NAS’ Top 44 Nets of all-time to be controversial, I’m certain the placement of Barry so low on the list is sure to ruffle a few feathers. And why not? How many players who are in their respective “best of an era” conversations have ever suited up for the Nets? Two? Three? Barry was a player with potential who actually reached it, unlike a number of other Nets who are certain to appear later on this list. But also keep in mind that Barry only spent two seasons with the Nets during their ABA iteration in New York. He was beyond outstanding, averaging more than 30 points, 7 rebounds and 4.5 assists during those two seasons, and putting the Nets organization on the map where it would inevitably achieve future glory in the ABA with Julius Erving in tow.

So perhaps it’s Barry’s personality that may be influencing his placement among all-time Nets. It’s essentially impossible to find any people that talk about how he made all of his teammates better a la a Jason Kidd, or how much he emotionally meant to his team and the game like Drazen Petrovic, or how he mentored the younger players on his team like a Vince Carter. You have this gem also from the Kornheiser piece, but we already know how GOOD Barry is at basketball:

“He was Larry Bird before there was a Larry Bird,” says Al Menendez, director of player personnel for the New Jersey Nets. “He was a great artist. A Mozart. A Picasso. A Caruso,” says Lou Carnesecca, who coached Barry for two seasons on the Nets. “I’d diagram a play, and Rick would instinctively see four or five options that I’d never even imagined. In 35 years of coaching I’ve never had another guy like that.”

Adding to the tarnishing of his legend is how he bounced around the NBA and ABA during the 1970s. He jumped from the San Francisco Warriors to the ABA’s Oakland Oaks during the 1967 story, and after a stint in Washington/Virginia, was with the Nets through 1972, helping the Nets reach the ABA Finals that year to boot. But then, a U.S. District Court judge ruled that Barry was prohibited from playing anywhere but with the NBA’s Golden State Warriors and he had to be returned to his original NBA team once his contract with the Nets expired.

“If I had to do it all over again,” Barry says, first with a grin and then a grimace, “I’d wait for some other fool to do it. It did me more harm than good. It was bad enough that people didn’t like the way I looked on the court, but when I went to the ABA I was cast as a money-hungry backstabber. So people who already didn’t like me could really tee off on me; I was fair game. Had I stayed in the NBA, I’d have overcome most of it. Eventually they’d have talked more about my playing than my histrionics. But when I left, boy, I was a marked man.”

Admittedly, my knowledge of Barry is reserved to articles like this, and NBA history clip shows. His underhanded free throw technique is as unique yet effective as it gets, and for someone who never saw him play, may be the most recognizable thing about his game I can point to.

But I understand there are going to be older fans who view Barry as so much more than perhaps this list gives him credit for. But that’s the funny thing about lists. There as subjective as it gets. Just like Barry’s game apparently was. Sure he was an all-time great, but if there’s hardly anyone out there to go to bat for you, what good is once-in-a-lifetime talent?

One of the few recordings from the most important quarter in Nets history:

Forgotten.

I wish I knew more about John Williamson.

Don’t get me wrong, he’s not completely absent from basketball lore. In Terry Pluto’s Loose Balls, a few well-traveled men shared their thoughts:

Williamson was an ass-kicker as a guard, which is something you seldom see. His game was to be physical, to pound you. – Bob Costas

You couldn’t take the ball away from Williamson. He would dribble the ball with one hand and have the other arm out to protect, literally stiff-arming anybody who tried to take it from him. He would just throw that arm out and — whack! — nail the guy guarding him. And the officials let it go because John had established that that was how he played. Soon word got around and everybody in the league just gave John a lot of room. – John Sterling

Williamson’s nickname was Super John and he led the team in personality. He was free-spirited, always upbeat and just a fun guy to be around, because he liked to play so much. That was before he got fat. He was about 6-foot-2 and 200 pounds of muscle. He was more of a warrior than a player, a guy who went out there and physically punished you. – Steve Albert

Along with his ass-kicking, his numbers speak for themselves; Williamson was a bruiser and a scorer. In the final year of the ABA, Williamson averaged 16.2 points per game for the Nets as a second option on offense behind Julius Erving. His scoring only got better once he got to the NBA, averaging 20.8 points per game for the Nets in 1977 until he was traded to the Pacers in a deal for a first-round pick — one that eventually became Bernard King.

The Nets couldn’t stay away for long, though; less than a year after trading him to the Pacers, the newly named New Jersey Nets traded for him again, this time only relinquishing Bob Carrington and two second-round picks. Williamson enjoyed further success in New Jersey, averaging 29.5 points per game in the 33 games following the trade, and 22.2 points per game the year after.

But statistics aside, there’s one major piece of Williamson’s career that’s largely shrouded in mystery. In 1976, in the final game in ABA history, the Nets overcame a 22-point third-quarter deficit to defeat the Denver Nuggets 110-106 and win the final ABA Finals. Williamson scored 24 of his 28 points in the second half, 16 in the fourth quarter alone. Dr. J didn’t score a single point in that fourth quarter, but Williamson carried the franchise during arguably its most important moment.

And yet, despite the importance of that game, of that quarter, there’s surprisingly little information readily available. There’s that radio clip above. There’s this peek into the first half on YouTube. There’s a misleading documentary that skims over Game 6 and doesn’t mention Williamson once. Most recants of that night mention Williamson’s heroics, but don’t delve much into how he achieved them.

So this entry, as of now, is a little incomplete. I recognize the greatness of his actions, but I don’t feel comfortable writing more about Williamson until I can see his impact in this crucial moment with my own eyes.

Luckily, I was able to track down one of the few remaining video copies of that 1976 Game 6. Once I’ve seen it — as of now, it’s in the mail — you’ll be hearing more from me. Additionally, if you’re one of the lucky fans who has seen this with your own two eyes, and remember the game well, don’t hesitate to add your knowledge.

The good folks over at Brooklyn Fans sent us this video, taken at the Nets’ PA Announcer tryouts. Looks like there’s some talent there!

Stick around until the end of the video to see a quote that might scare James Dolan. But I thought it was impossible!

Other than my duties here on Nets Are Scorching, I also write at The Basketball Jones. Recently, I rounded up some of the best NBA bloggers in the business, our very own Devin Kharpertian included, and conducted an all-time NBA fantasy draft. You can check the particulars and results here. Devin has actually been getting a lot of props in the comments section, so check it!