Nets Are Scorching

The Nets (14-33) look to bounce back from their embarrassing effort in Indiana last night as they face the Milwaukee Bucks (18-26) on the road tonight. Here are a few keys to the game:

The Bounce Back: It might have been the worst performance of the year for the Nets last night as they couldn’t score, or defend against Indiana. As the second half of a back-to-back, the Nets need to plain show up tonight, and not get shellacked again.

No Vendettas: As predicted, former Net Chris Doulgas-Roberts scorched the Nets back in December as the team was in the midst of trade rumors, going off for 24 points on 9-14 shooting. Even the biggest CDR fans in NJ realize he’s only capable of doing that when properly motivated (otherwise, he’d still be a Net), so let’s hope the defense has an answer for him tonight.

Center Play: Brook Lopez had 28 points but only 1 rebound last night. A better all around effort is needed from the Nets franchise player, as he faces up with a Center in Andrew Bogut who has always given Brook a hard time in the post.

AP Photo/Bill Kostroun

At least the Nets didn’t lose to a bad team by 20, as cautioned in the pregame open thread. They avoided that debacle. Instead, they lost by 23 to a bad team. A bad team without its two best players. This was, unequivocally, the Nets’ worst game of the season, closing a two-game stretch of some of the worst basketball in recent memory. Last night’s game was an absolute disgrace to the NBA.

Admittedly, the Nets were without Devin Harris, sitting out the contest with a bad quadriceps. It would have made sense for the offense to struggle. But that wasn’t really the case. The Nets essentially matched their per-game scoring output with 92. The real shocker was that the Nets managed to surrender a walloping 115 points to the only team in the NBA averaging fewer points per contest than they do — with Andrew Bogut and Brandon Jennings resting up on the sidelines.

It’s a surprise, really, looking the box score over. The Bucks did shoot 58 percent from the field, but the turnover, assist, and rebounding differentials were all low, and the Nets actually had more points in the paint. But the Nets made only 45 percent of their field goals, and with the way they are playing defense recently, that won’t get the job done.

It was a bit perplexing to see which players for the Bucks were leading the offensive charge. You might expect Corey Maggette to put in his 20 points (even though it’s not 2004 anymore), but all the other names are baffling characters. Ersan Ilyasova had 22, former Net Chris Douglas-Roberts, obviously playing with a chip on his shoulder, had 24, and Earl “Motherf***ing” Boykins (if you don’t know what this means: http://bit.ly/eLrpeY) had 17. Benefit from having a team’s stars out can only come if you restrict the role players to what they’re supposed to do.

Meanwhile, pretty much every Net was bad except for Kris Humphries, Derrick Favors, and Jordan Farmar. That trio combined for 54 points on 58 percent shooting. Brook Lopez had 5 points in 19 minutes, Stephen “I think I can make a 20-footer” Graham was 0-of-5, and Travis Outlaw was 1-of-7.

Devin posted on Twitter that Outlaw has shot 12-of-65 from three-point range in his last 18 games. Based on his $7-million-per-year salary, he has been making $128,000 per three-pointer made over that 18-game stretch. Quite a value pickup the Nets grabbed there.

It’s becoming more and more obvious that the Nets don’t care anymore about this season. Their effort is zilch, and that’s why their defense is zilch.

Commenter hbj725 is right on the money:

Its getting harder and harder to watch our team. Right now i dont care who we trade. Im just tired of this team sucking…

Everyone knows my opinion on where the Nets should go from this point forward. “NetsAren’tScorching” echoed my sentiments precisely:

I agree… Best argument in favor of getting carmelo is the fact that watching this team now is soul-crushing. If we get carmelo yes we give up our future, no we won’t win a title, but at least the games will be watchable, if not downright entertaining. At this point it’s very tough to put up with…

At some point, it just gets tediously frustrating to watch the games. I know most won’t agree with me, I was much more satisfied watching the Nets when a bow-out in the first or second round the playoffs was basically a guarantee. It’s time to make the short-term move to make the team watchable again and to spare this roster absolute mediocrity.

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.

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.