Nets Are Scorching

So I got an interesting e-mail in my inbox last night, it was a couple links to a video interview and Rod Thorn’s breakdown of the roster.  Here is the video, you can also find it on the Nets’ official website:

I know that it is a long one, but I urge you guys to watch the whole thing.  It was interesting to hear Thorn discuss all these topics.  The most interesting thing I picked up from this video was around the 7 minute mark.  Here, Thorn was asked about the potential free agency pool, and while he can’t mention anyone by name (NBA rule) it seemed like Thorn went out of his way to call the pool “average”.  Now this is true, there aren’t any big names coming out, but after hearing this video, I don’t expect to see anyone new joining the roster besides the rookies (A complete change from last year).  This is a real smart move on Thorn’s part though, because the Nets are in a position where they want to save money (whether they admit it or not) and now Thorn is making an excuse not to spend this offseason (even though it is somewhat valid) that isn’t the money.  That way Thorn doesn’t come off as cheap to the fans.

Now this isn’t all we got from Thorn.  He also wen’t down the roster one-by-one and made a little statement about each one of them.  You can find the whole thing here, but I am just going to post and comment on a few of these.

Rod Thorn On Vince:

“I think Vince had a tremendous year, both on the court and in the locker room. I think he was a very positive influence on our younger players with his support. And there are very few guys in this league who can average 20 points, five rebounds and five assists, so you have to give him credit. I think he had a great year.”

Every statement that Rod Thorn has made about Vince as of late has been very lovey-dovey.  It is starting to become obvious that VC will be a Net next year unless some team makes us an offer we can’t refuse on draft day.

Rod Thorn On CDR:

“Give Chris a lot of credit; he hardly played at all at the beginning of the year, but continued to work hard, got better and when his time came, he took advantage of it. he’s as confident as anybody on our team, he’s got deceiving size: he doesn’t look as big as he is. When he goes to the bucket, he’s got great finish on his drive game. An improving shooter, and I think he’s got a good future.”

High praise for CDR here.  I like how Thorn talks about his height, what I read from this statement is that Thorn would like to see CDR get time at the 3 next year.  If this is true you can see the Nets drafting a 4 this year.  Sorry DeMar DeRozan fans (I am not one of these by the way).

Rod Thorn On Yi:

“Yi had his ups and downs early. Right before he got hurt, he was playing his best ball of the year. He can shoot the ball, he’s athletic and can run the court. He needs to work, needs to just play more, and add strength.”

Rod keeps this one short and sweet.  Now I know he can’t just flat out say that he made a mistake with this trade, but you have to believe that is what he is thinking now-a-days.

Rod Thorn On Josh Boone:

“Josh was kind of up and down, had some real good moments, some not-so-good. Athletic, good hands, nice feel for the game, understands how to play. Needs to work on his shot obviously, his free throws and really get himself in top condition.”

This is the most negative Thorn was in these comments.  Again maybe I am looking too much into it (or maybe I want it to happen so bad I am taking everything to mean it), but I think what Thorn says here is just screaming “Boone isn’t getting the job done and we need to draft a 4 this year!”  But hey, maybe that is the conspiracy theorist in me.

I grabbed the image above from over at ClipperBlog.com who grabbed it from the Official NBA release.

Now the first place winner was an obvious choice (even though I was pushing for Brook).  I know it isn’t really a big deal and maybe I am just looking for a reason to complain, but seriously?  O.J. Mayo in second and Brook in third?  Really?  It wasn’t even close either, I mean seriously what were these voters thinking?

Now I already broke down the reasons why Brook Lopez was better than Derrick Rose, so I am not going to do it again here (Although if you use the transitive property, if Brook’s numbers were better than Rose’s they HAVE to be better than O.J. Mayo’s).  I guess I was just a little surprise that’s all.

All this Lawrence Frank talk has got me off track, well now we are back on track…Welcome to the season review series.  Here we will be taking a look back at a few themes of the season and evaluate them.  In our second edition of the rookie reviews, we are going to be taking a look at Ryan Anderson.

If you would have told me that Ryan Anderson was going to start 30 games for the Nets this year, I would have been surprised.  Not because I didn’t like him as a player, but when he was drafted last year with the 21st selection, I pictured Ryan Anderson as more of a Steve Novak/Jason Kapono type of player.  Someone who would come in, shoot some threes, and come out.

However that wasn’t the case, Ryan showed a more complete game than anyone thought he had this year, and for the final 30 games he was starting as our 4 (some of it was due to the poor play of Yi, but Ryan played well enough to earn the starts).

In his 19.9 minutes per game, Anderson averaged 7.4 PPG and 4.7 RPG, but what impressed me most was his ability to improve his ball handling throughout the year.  Now he is far from being a great ball handler, but if you look at his early games where he would catch, face, and either shoot or pass you can tell that he has come a long way in that department.

Ryan is a tweener and can play either the 3/4 but he has weaknesses in both spots.  If he were to play the 3, he is a little too slow to cover the quicker wing type players and when he plays the 4, most nights his lack of size leads to mismatches.  In my opinion, he needs to either work on his speed or his strength this offseason so he can break out of that tweener mold and have a set position.  I personally would love to see him playing the three next year that way we could have Vince Carter move back to the 2 (But this all depends on who we draft, if we draft a 3, Ryan will see most of his time at the 4 again this year).

This decision better come soon because I am running out of pictures of Lawrence Frank in silly poses making silly faces to use for these posts.

So after using my top notch sources (NJ Nets Official Twitter Page), we have learned that Rod Thorn will make a decision on Lawrence Frank before the draft lottery.  Don’t believe me?  Well, check out this tweet:

Rod Thorn held court with the media today, and said that we’ll know whether Lawrence Frank will return before the Draft Lottery (May 19).

As I mentioned earlier, Thorn’s biggest concern about rehiring is whether or not the team has begun to tune him out.

The longer Thorn goes without giving any updates on Frank’s job, the more likely he is going to be gone.  The only thing that could save Lawrence Frank now is Nets’ finacial situation.  If the Nets are hurting so bad financially and they don’t want to eat Frank’s contract and pay for a new coach, Frank will probably stay for his final year.

My source is reporting that video of the press conference will be up on NJNets.com later today, so I will try to pull those videos for you when they show up.

So maybe we won’t know the fate of Lawrence Frank’s job today.  Fred Kerber is reporting that Rod Thorn has yet to make a decision about Frank’s future.  Here is what Thorn said this morning:

“We shall see. We’re still in the process of evaluating our season and evaluating the different things we do.”

Kerber is also reporting that Thorn also said he needs to determine if the “voice” still is getting through.  In my opinion, this statement makes me believe that Thorn is leaning towards sending Lawrence Frank packing and ending his run as the longest tenured coach in the Eastern Conference.  Why?  Well, if Frank’s “voice” was getting through, there would be no question about it, and Rod Thorn wouldn’t have to look into it.

Word on the street is that we will know the status of Lawrence Frank’s job sometime tomorrow morning.  This is when Rod Thorn is giving his end of season state of the Nets’ address, and apparently he will speak about Lawarence Frank.  It is safe to say that things are still up in the air, because Thorn will meet tonight with senior management and owners to talk about Lawrence Frank.  Other basketball topics will be discussed, but you have to imagine that Lawrence Frank is going to be the main focus.

Now should Lawrence Frank be fired?  Meh, I don’t know.  Do I want him fired?  Kinda.  Now this might be a little unfair, but I haven’t really ever been too much of a Lawrence Frank fan (mainly because I thought Byron Scott got a raw deal).

The cases can (and have) been made about keeping him or firing him, but in my gut I think he is gone.

This biggest factor in this opinion is that I would think the Nets’ front office would want to avoid having a lame-duck coach (for those who don’t know, a lame duck coach is one who is in his final year and probably won’t be signed after his contract is up). A “lame-duck” coach presents two problems, one is that a “lame-duck” coach will sacrafice the future to win now because his job is on the line (An example of this is playing Josh Boone over a rookie 4 that we may draft just because Boone would give the Nets a slighty better chance to win now – and that would lead Frank not to get fired).  The second problem with having a “lame-duck” coach is that Lawrence Frank will be on a very short leash.  Lets say the Nets start the season off horribly and we have to fire Frank, then we are stuck with an interm coach, and coaches that we may have been able to hire might not be available mid-season.  I say if we are going to be firing Frank, we do it now so we can get the best coach possible in here.

We will see what happens tomorrow though, make sure you check it here to find out what happens to Lawrence Frank and to get some opinions on it.

Welcome to the season review series.  Here we will be taking a look back at a few themes of the season and evaluate them.  In this first edition we will be talking about the Nets rookies.

Yes I am going to be using this picture every time I mention these three rookies.  The Nets’ rookies were a real bright spot this season.  All three made significant contributions during the year (Brook Lopez throughout the season/Ryan Anderson towards the second half of the season/CDR towards the tail-end of the season), which is something that usually doesn’t happen (especially when you got a second rounder thrown in there).  I am going to be looking at them one by one.  In this post, I am going to be looking at Brook Lopez.

Brook Lopez

Brook Lopez is every one’s number two Rookie of the Year this year.  I knew he was going to be a great player, but I thought it was going to take a year or two.  False.  Brook has been a dominant force on both ends of the court.  In my mind he is a franchise type center.

Lets look at his numbers.

• Brook played in every Nets’ game and averaged 30.5 Minutes Per Game.  Brook scored 13.0 PPG (11th among NBA centers/6th among rookies) and averaged 8.1 RPG (14th among NBA centers/2nd among rookies).  Add in his 1.8 BPG (9th among all NBA players) and you have the complete package.

What he did well?

• He didn’t foul.  Brook only averaged 3.1 fouls per game.  With a guy who gets as many blocks as Brook did (especially as a rookie) this is a great thing.  Compare this to Greg Oden, the guy who was supposed to be the defensive stopper among rookies.  Greg had 3.9 fouls per game in about 10 minutes less time.  In terms of blocks per foul, Brook averaged 1.02 blocks per foul.  Greg Oden had 0.45 blocks per foul.  This can be attributed to his knowledge of the game, solid footwork, and fantastic timing.

• He was fantastic from the line.  Yes, I said fantastic.  Brook shot 79.3% from the line (10th among NBA centers).

What he needs to improve on:

• Crashing the offensive boards. Of his 8.1 rebounds per game, only 2.7 are on the offensive side.  If he gets that number up to around 3.5 or 4, it would be fantastic.  Now I think this comes with experience.  The more shots you see go up, the better you will be at reading the bounces off the rim.  He can also spend some time this offseason watching some tape and seeing how defenders boxed him out this year, then he can work on some techniques that will help him grab more boards.

• He needs to expand his range. Let’s take a look at his shot chart.

• Brook was 333-549 from right under the basket.  Which is real good, but look at the number of shot attempts he got away from the basket.  He only took 303 (35% of his shots) attempts away from the basket, and only hit 106 of them (34.9%).  If I can pick up on this, teams are going to be able to as well.  Teams are not going to let him catch it as deep as he has been, and they will try to force him to make his catches farther away from the basket.  This offseason I really want to see Brook expand his range.  I am not even talking foul line extended, I am talking like 8-10 foot range (Think Yao), and if he does that, he will be pretty hard to cover.

The outlook for next year

Brook has the ability to become a 20-10 guy next year, and that is no exaggeration.  I really think that this will happen.  Over the year Brook has displayed a work ethic that shows me he will work hard this upcoming season to improve the flaws in his game.

ESPN is running a feature called NBA’s 65 in 65 where they have 65 NBA chats.  These chats will feature analysts, writers, and players.

This Saturday the NBA chat featured Devin Harris.  It is a little disappointed that I just found out this today (nice job advertising these ESPN – I kid…), I would have asked him some awesome questions.  You can find the whole chat here, but I picked out some excerpts that I found pretty interesting.

On the Nets’ losing atmosphere:

Yes, it bothers people. But it’s part of our job. You just try to turn a losing situation into a winning situation.

On whether or not the Nets should go after LeBron in free agency:

Definitely. For all sorts of reasons. He makes the team around you better. He’s definitely an unselfish superstar and he’ll attract other players. So he’s an all-around great pickup.

On the rooks:

They have such upside. Brook is definitely coming on. People got to see what he can do this season. He can really be a superstar. He’s a tremendous talent.

On the biggest shot of his life:

The buzzer-beater this year, probably. I also had a free throw in college to win a conference championship. So it’s a toss-up between those two.

On if he thinks he should be the MIP:

I do.

Now the stuff I took out and put here wasn’t even half of the chat, so you should go check out the rest.  It is an interesting read.