A Case to Stay the Course for the Nets
Dec 30, 2009 Kiki Vandeweghe, Opinion, Roster, Salary Cap
It’s difficult to advocate staying the course when the ship is sinking, but for the New Jersey Nets, it may be their best option.
At practice yesterday, the topic du jour for beat writers and columnists was whether or not head coach Kiki Vandeweghe, who’s also still the GM of the team, would consider any potential upgrades for the roster via trade. There are certainly some high profile names readily available, including Tracy McGrady who seems to have played his last game with the Houston Rockets, and Nate Robinson, who’s permanently glued to Mike D’Antoni’s bench in New York.
But Kiki’s plan is to stay put, unless he can acquire any future “assets” that would add to the Nets core, which as currently constituted includes Devin Harris, Brook Lopez, Courtney Lee, Chris Douglas-Roberts and Yi Jianlian. Of course, the other goal in all this is to maintain their salary cap flexibility headed into the summer, when a number of high impact free agents will hit the open market.
“We fought hard and obviously sacrificed a lot to maintain the cap space,” Vandeweghe said. “Right now it would be silly to do anything to turn back that [plan].”
This is the right strategy. While the Nets are going to continue to struggle this season, and could possibly approach having the worst record in NBA history if they don’t start winning some games soon, it’s highly unlikely anyone the Nets could acquire right now would make enough of an impact to turn this season around in any meaningful way. Meanwhile, if they acquire a long-term piece, it could end up costing the team in salary cap space this summer when there are likely even better players available, and if they acquire an expiring contract, like McGrady, it’ll likely cost the Nets a piece or two from their core. The only palatable (and thus, unlikely) trade scenario, would be if a team like the Raptors, was willing to unload their marquee free agent-to-be. The Nets could hypothetically acquire Chris Bosh and then be in the best position to offer him the most money and resign him this summer. It’s a risk that’s unlikely to come to fruition as why would the Raptors trade Bosh if they’re in the Eastern Conference playoff hunt?
As much as it hurts, what the Nets need to do now this season is evaluate and evaluate some more, to help determine who is actually a core player on this team, and who’s roster filler or less going forward. The Nets have certainly done a lot of losing this season, but because of injury, they’ve yet to do it together. The only really had their five key guys together for the first two games this season. Even with Yi Jianlian back and looking like a budding superstar the past three games, we haven’t seen him do it with Chris Douglas-Roberts and his 14 shots a game mixed in. Meanwhile, Yi’s success seems to be coinciding with a slide from Brook Lopez, so it’s impossible to know how these five guys can coexist if they’re never healthy enough to play together.
Of course, it’s possible that Kiki and company get slammed by the fan base and the media for doing nothing, and letting this season get further out of hand. There will be talk about all of the empty seats at the Izod Center, and how owner Bruce Ratner has put a lock on the team’s wallet until Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov presumably takes over. While there is some truth to these claims, it doesn’t change what the 2009-10 New Jersey Nets were all about headed into this season – riding out this storm with the promise of better times ahead.
Nets on the Net: 12/30/09 Edition
Dec 30, 2009 Brook Lopez, Brooklyn, Izod Center, Kiki Vandeweghe, Nets on the Net, Salary Cap, Yi
Brook Lopez, one of the few Nets to play in every game this season, is looking to move on from his rough game Monday night, which was capped off when he walked out on the media afterwards: “I hold myself to high standards and I didn’t meet them and then obviously the loss (factored in), too,” Lopez continued. “Then after the game I felt I didn’t hold myself right, I didn’t act right. It was just a lot of stuff altogether.”
Dave D’Alessandro looks into what could be frustrating Brook Lopez: Lopez averages only 14.2 shots per game — that is the second-lowest average among the top 25 scorers in the league. And the befuddling part is that his shots have dropped sharply (to 10.0 per game) in the three games that the Nets’ top shot-taker (Chris Douglas Roberts, 14.3) has been absent. So something is askew. They’ve stopped running pick-and-rolls for him. They rarely look for the lob over the top when he is fronted. They never re-post it when he sends it out against a double-team.
Kiki Vandeweghe and company are not willing to sacrifice their salary cap space and minutes for their younger players just to get a veteran that would add a couple of wins: “If we can improve it without impacting next year, you always try and do that. To me if we can add assets going forward, that’s important. We’re not looking to bring in veterans to take the time of young players. To bring in somebody here to take Brook’s minutes, or Devin [Harris’] minutes, Yi’s minutes or Courtney’s minutes – we’re not looking to do that. If we can augment, we’ll augment.”
When it comes to the Nets, the Izod Center is in its finals days: A concessionaire selling T-shirts and sweatshirts said he could not lower his prices, as one customer hoped. “But just wait, it’ll be free in a few weeks,” he chuckled.
CCTV talks about how Yi Jianlian’s career high in points Monday night was overshadowed by the Nets loss.
HoopsWorld breaks down each team’s performance after 30 games, including the Nets, who get an “F.”
After Bruce Ratner’s eminent domain victory in Brooklyn last month, Norman Oder of the Atlantic Yards Report takes a walking tour of Brooklyn.
Fun With Charts: Nets Under Contract 2010-2011
Jun 30, 2009 2010 Offseason, Fun With Charts, Infographics, Salaries, Salary Cap
During my daily Internet browsing session, I came across the awesome website FlipFlopFlyBall. It is a site that takes random and some not so random baseball tidbits and displays that information visually through charts and graphs. Seeing that site inspired me to try and make some Nets related charts. So in this one, we are taking a look at a big talking point here in NJ, cap space in 2010:
If the chart is too small for you, you can click it for the full size image. By looking at the pie-chart you notice that the Nets only have a little more than half of the projected salary cap committed to players already. That is a whole lot of space to sign a couple big-time free agents. Or as Rod Thorn puts it (more on this later), “Two maxed out contracts.”
You brake it down even more and you see out of the all of the money that is already committed to players in 2010-2011, only about a quarter of it is guaranteed. A little under half of it is team options so it is a realistic possibility that the Nets could have even more than the “27-30 million” under the cap that Rod Thorn projects us having (lets say that Yi and Sean Williams – both players have team options for 2010 – don’t come around, we can cut ties with them and add another $6.5 million to our cap space).
Stay tuned for more of these, I really had fun making it, and I think by seeing data in charts rather than just looking at the numbers helps emphasize certain points.
Tags: Infographics, Infographs, NBA, NJ Nets