Nets Are Scorching

Lawrence Frank is the only coach in NBA history to begin his coaching career with 13 consecutive wins.

Lawrence Frank is also the only coach in NBA history to end his tenure with a team with 17 consecutive losses.

This, my friends, begins and ends the Lawrence Frank tale.

An average basketball fan looks at Lawrence Frank on the sidelines and sees something unexpected. Basketball coaches are supposed to be tall, handsome men, with powerful voices and controlled emotions. They’re supposed to be ex-players, or at least guys who have been involved in the game for years on some surface level. Basically, they’re supposed to be Phil Jackson clones.

Enter Lawrence Frank, a 5’8″ (ballpark), slightly portly, balding redhead with no playing experience outside of high school, instructing men twice his size on basketball techniques such as boxing out and proper post position. I wouldn’t be surprised if a casual fan saw him on the court and wondered if he’d wandered out there by accident. Lesson: looks can be deceiving.

Frank ended his career at 225-241, though if you discount that final awful season it’d stand at a perfectly even 225-225. It says something about a franchise when one of its best coaches couldn’t even scrape a .500 record in over 400 games, but I’d argue that the record says much about the cards the front office dealt him — particularly later in his tenure — and I think Frank played those cards about as well as he could’ve.

Though it’s certainly true that Brook Lopez was not impressed:

Lopez

Frank wasn’t a Zen master. He screamed on the bench. He cussed on live television. He cracked awkward jokes in press conferences. He fluctuated between feuding with his star players — benching Devin Harris and Vince Carter during the second half of a blowout in January of 2009 — and receiving glowing praise from them:

He wants to win. He’s an X’s and O’s guy. He works his butt off. I think sometimes he gets a little too excited. I tell him all the time to calm down, but he never listens to me. I say ‘Relax, everything will be okay.’ … I think he’s been great in my development. He’s given me life … an opportunity to show the world what I have to offer as a player. … I’d tell the truth (to Thorn). I’d tell him how I feel about it: I think he’s been great. - Vince Carter

Obviously he was very big in my development — taking the chains off, per se — and letting me go, allowing me to do some of the things I was capable of doing. I think he’s a good coach, and we’d love to have him back next year. - Devin Harris

For what it’s worth, in every full season Lawrence Frank coached in New Jersey, the Nets finished with a record at or above their pythagorean win-loss expectation: +6 in 2004-05, +4 in 2005-06, +2 in 2006-07, +7 in 2007-08, and even in 2008-09. That difference could be attributable to luck, as how coaches impact their teams statistically remains an inexact science. But by all accounts Frank, though imperfect, was a tenacious worker and a brilliant basketball mind, sometimes putting in 20-hour days at the office. It’s not surprising to me that the team did a little better than expected every year with Frank at the helm — even in that final year, the Nets were projected to decline precipitously post-Kidd and didn’t.

Frank scored a job as an analyst briefly after leaving New Jersey, then replaced Tom Thibodeau on the Boston Celtics bench as an assistant to Doc Rivers. Once the NBA season officially starts, he’ll be the lead man in Detroit, trying to turn around a broken franchise. After the way he helped Brook Lopez’s development in his rookie season, you have to like Greg Monroe’s chances.

Close your eyes and try to think of a memorable moment in Jason Collins’ Nets career. Maybe an emphatic dunk, or a clutch shot, or a key block of an opponent. What do you see? If your eyes are closed, you should see nothing. And if you open them, you’re probably still seeing nothing.

That’s what happens when you have a career Player Efficiency Rating (7.6) that matches your vertical leap. Search Jason Collins on YouTube, and outside of some mocking, “Jason Collins Dunks!” or “Jason Collins Blocks a Shot!” videos, you’re not going to find any remixes or fan videos. I guess there just isn’t a high demand of videos showcasing a player putting a solid body on an offensive player in the post.

Still, Collins is worth celebration. How could there be a “Top Nets” list without him? Did Collins ever have outrageous stats during his Nets career? No. He was not on the floor to score, and his two primary coaches, Byron Scott and Lawrence Frank, considered him a “defensive specialist,” despite producing middling to poor rebounding and blocks numbers. Some numbers even argued that Collins’s defensive impact ranked among the best in the league.

Twin’s game was not about stats, or at least that’s what everyone would have you believe. He’s arguably a benefactor of being in the right place at the right time, but he was a model of consistency nonetheless. In his 2001-02 rookie season, he was the primary back-up big man on a team that made its first-ever NBA Finals, and in 2002-03 he was the starting center for a Nets team that made it to its second finals. Twin went on to be the main guy in the middle for a team that consistently made the postseason, and reached the Eastern Conference semifinals three additional times.

Granted, all of those teams were Jason Kidd and Kenyon Martin’s (and later Vince Carter’s). But Collins always came to work ready to play. We’ll never know how the Nets would have fared against the likes of Shaquille O’Neal or Tim Duncan if they had a Center who could put the ball in the hoop, like a Brook Lopez. But you can’t fight how much Twin meant to those Nets playoff teams. Make no mistake, he belongs on this list. Just take it from his coach:

The Nets have granted John Loyer, highly regarded as one of the best assistants in the game, an interview with the Detroit Pistons. Recently, the Pistons hired former Nets coach Lawrence Frank as their head coach, and Frank originally hired Loyer three years ago. He clearly feels that Loyer could help a failing Pistons roster.

The Nets have already lost Larry Krystkowiak and could lose Sam Mitchell if the Timberwolves hire him as their head coach. Statistically, losing assistants is not a major thorn in a team’s side, but I hope this isn’t a trend for such an inexperienced & fluctuating New Jersey roster.

Don't worry Kiki... if I was grading coaches based on most stylish shirt and blazer combos, you'd be #1.

I figured I’d change up the Nets Yearbook format a little bit this week and try and generate a post that’s geared more towards creating some debate for our readers. Plus, considering how the lockout is likely to last a very long time, I’m going to have vary my posts in order to give you an effective look back at least once a week! I don’t want to run out of specific seasons to talk about which very well may happen if I write about one season every week.

So today I want to talk a bit about Nets coaches, especially since last week’s entry introduced perhaps one of the worst coaches of all-time, Butch Beard. And since nothing inspires debate more than an arbitrarily ordered list, I thought I’d rank the Nets coaches from worst to best during the timeframe where I’ve been a fan (1992-93 to present). The criteria for this list are simple. There is no criteria. This is purely my opnion and my opinion alone and you’re welcome to argue with me in the comments section.

So let’s start with the worst:

Read more…

The theme of the Saturday/Sunday Nets coverage is new head coach Avery Johnson, and what his presence has meant for an organization coming off perhaps their worst season in history. Sports Illustrated’s Chris Mannix captures what Avery is doing the second time around:

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.