I could talk about Rod Thorn’s charisma, the slight twang in his accent, how he always came off as an affable, upstanding man. I could talk about how Thorn arguably was the fairest Executive VP of Player Operations the league has ever seen, curtailing the violent play of the 80s and 90s as he ruled with a calm iron fist. I could talk about how his NBA playing career influenced his future in front office politics.
But those things are only a modicum of your overall impact. Truthfully, your record defines your greatness. And Rod Thorn’s front office record with the Nets is nothing short of phenomenal.
Byron Scott may not have had Lawrence Frank’s longevity, Chuck Daly’s career resume, or the stunning blazer/shirt combinations of Kiki Vandeweghe, but he’s done one thing that no other franchise coach has been able to accomplish, or even come relatively closing to accomplishing: he brought the Nets to back-to-back NBA Finals appearances. Read more…
It was basically inevitable that Billy King would join the New Jersey Nets after Rod Thorn’s departure, what with the famous Nets-Sixers Executive Swap Program (King, Thorn, and Ed Stefanski have all worked for both organizations), and it didn’t appear to be the greatest move. King had already earned the reputation of being a figurehead in Philadelphia, and it seemed that would only get worse with Avery Johnson’s dominant personality. Nevertheless, he proved himself to be a good analyst of draft talent.
Despite certain events of this Nets season, please try to propose one thing that King has done wrong. Just one. And don’t say Travis Outlaw, Johan Petro, or Jordan Farmar, as Thorn inked all three of those players before “retiring,” which actually meant going a couple hours down I-95. Talk about a great going-away present. With the Deron Williams and Terrence Williams deals, among others, King got off on the right foot with this franchise.
The Pink Shirt: Yeah. Deron. Supposedly this deal arose from a consolation call from Utah GM Kevin O’Connor to King with regard to the Nets’ missing out on Carmelo Anthony, which metamorphosed into a rudimentary trade negotiation. King jokingly suggested a deal for Williams, to which O’Connor replied seriously. And then some greatness occurred to make the deal happen.
The Paper Bag: Eh, maybe the Troy Murphy deal. He was a complete slug with the team, and it might have been nice to hold on to Courtney Lee for the foreseeable future. That said, picking up Murphy’s expiring contract might end up having been a catalyst to a sign-and-trade deal for Dwight Howard, but right now that’s just basic conjecture right now.
Final Thoughts: King won’t have much of a chance to prove his draft prowess this season, as the Nets only have the 27th and 36th picks this year, but he has shown that he’s more than an empty seat. There still remains a notable chance that Johnson could overpower King and convert him into his hand puppet, but the trade for Deron has certainly earned him a lot of respect around the NBA. If he can get Williams to re-sign and reel in Howard, he’ll be approaching Pat Riley status for modern-day executives.
Billy King makes his first trip to Springfield. Coincidentally, so do I. (That’s not me in the picture, though.)
Billy King’s trip up to Springfield was originally intended as a formal announcement of the partnership between the Nets and the Springfield Armor, but with the recent “evaluation” of Terrence Williams, much of his pregame press conference was devoted to that discussion. King mentioned in the conference that the Nets specifically want to redesign how teams use the D-League – that not only is the Nets franchise “trying to win NBA Championships, but we’re trying to win NBA D-League championships, too.”
In his talk with me (which was caught on video, but the audio quality is so poor that it wouldn’t be worth showing unless you wanted to just see our faces mumbling incoherently), he was very clear that the Nets just want to give Terrence the opportunity to play ball. This was not a demotion, it was not a slap in his face, the Nets just didn’t see him fitting in with the NBA roster yet and wanted him to regain his love for the game. It was not an opportunity to “showcase” him (and King also said he was “not going to fuel any trade rumors”), but that Williams wasn’t going to get enough time in the NBA at this juncture to really justify having him there. Every person I talked to – King, Williams, coach Dee Brown – said there was no timetable on Williams’ return to the NBA, and that his progress would be continuously evaluated.
Another quick note: in my brief talk with Brown, he noted that Terrence had been a consummate professional in Springfield, had not shown up late to a single practice (actually showing up early multiple times), and had been everything an ideal teammate should be.
For what it’s worth, King brought up his name when discussing 2011 free agency, noting that the Nets would have $17 million in cap space, but no-commented when questioned about trading for Carmelo Anthony.
G/F Terrence Williams skies for the layup and-1 over Red Claws C Tiny Gallon.
Of course, the night wasn’t all about general managers, even though King, Former Nets GM and current 76ers GM Rod Thorn, and Celtics GM Danny Ainge were all in attendance. There was, in fact, a basketball game played, and despite his poor shooting night, there was a lot to like about Terrence’s game. He finished the night with 16 points, 15 rebounds, and 13 assists, and he earned every one. One Armor player, while leaving the game, marveled at having a guy like Terrence on the team, noting “having him there… it spreads the floor so much. Makes all the difference.” His vision was on full display, and although he took 19 shots he seemed most interested in being a facilitator than a shooter. He was constantly communicating with his teammates, out-leaping everyone for rebounds, finding open guys under the rim with ease, and his most impressive assist didn’t even count as an assist – inbounding the ball from the opposing baseline with a three-point lead and 14 seconds left, Terrence found L.D. Williams streaking towards the basket ahead of his defender, fired a perfectly placed baseball pass, and L.D. finished with a slam to all but ice the game.
Rod Thorn is disgusted. Maybe with leaving the Nets, maybe with Billy King’s breath. Only he knows.
That being said, Williams is still falling prey to some of the issues that befell him in the NBA. While his vision for finding open teammates is still as good as ever, he did fall prey to tunnel vision at other times – clearly wanting to be “the guy who takes the shot” on a few possessions in the game. That resulted in him usually pulling up for midrange jumpers in stride, which is a skill Williams has really yet to master. Most of his misses came in this variety. While it’s clear that he was the most athletically dominant player on the floor – routinely grabbing rebounds with three taller players surrounding him – he didn’t seem to utilize that athleticism many times driving to the basket. There were no dunks by Williams in the game, and most slashes ended in a pass to an open man outside (good) or a pullup jumper (bad). He did seem to pick it up late. Three of his five made field goals came late in the fourth quarter; one a 3 to tie the game at 91, one a layup to put the Armor up 101-99, and the third a pretty layup and-1 to put the Armor up 105-99 a minute later. However, one could make the argument that had he done that earlier – I.E. made six or seven shots in the first three quarters instead of just two – there would have been no need for the late-game heroics.
Williams was rightfully named the player of the game when the final buzzer sounded, as it was clear he was the most impressive guy on the floor. I got a chance to talk to him after the game, and as you’ll see the locker room was still buzzing. I’ve provided a transcript with the videos since it’s hard to hear him sometimes. I’ve got to bring a microphone next time out there.
Terrence: I felt great. Honestly, I felt… Not statwise, I felt great as far as conditioning-wise, injury-wise, I feel like I’m 100%, that I can do anything. Nothing limits me. At the end of the day, I’m glad we got the win, so I’ll take that.
Note: I have no idea which player yelled out “They got sesame seed buns!” midway through this answer. Presumably someone hungry.
Terrence: I’m not trying to be the captain. I don’t want to be the captain of this team. I want to be a person that has a voice that’s been there. Whether I’m going to be here for a month, or I’m here until tomorrow. Whatever it is, I’ll be able to help these guys for when they do leave, what they play and put in their game.
Terrence: I think that helps. Especially a guy who played in the NBA myself, for these guys trying to make it there, I can tell them what I’ve been through. I can tell them what type of positions they’re supposed to be in, things they should do and should not do, and we just go from there.
Terrence: Yeah, I talked to him before the game, during the game, talked to him after the game… We’ll see what happens. *laughs*
To close this report, I’d be remiss not to mention how great the staff at the Springfield Armor was. PR Director Eli Pearlstein went out of his way to make sure everything was taken care of. They really went above & beyond the call of duty. As long as Terrence Williams is down there, expect at least one more Armor Report in the next couple of weeks.
With LeBron James and Miami Thrice coming to the Prudential Center today, it’s not only the fans who are reminded of the team’s failure to attract one of the “Big Three” in free agency this past summer. Fred Kerber talks to members of the front office, and captures what exactly went wrong in the team’s pursuit of LeBron and Chris Bosh, which reportedly went well when the team first made its pitch in July. Key section:
(Bobby) Marks and (Rod) Thorn gave a laundry list of why James and Bosh (they felt all along Wade never would leave Miami for New Jersey) snubbed the Nets. The stigma of a 12-70 record plus two years in Newark were killers. Others inside the franchise believe the groundwork was set at the 2008 Olympics and the Nets had no chance going in.
“We never got any correspondence from LeBron’s camp after the first meeting,” Marks said. “When it was a three-, four-day stretch that we didn’t hear, we knew we were out.”
Leading into the summer, I thought the Nets had no chance of getting LeBron in New Jersey, but I’ll readily admit, in the day or so that followed their pitch, I was probably being delusionally optimistic. Alas, it seems that really no team but Miami had a chance of making this happen, since the Big Three wanted to play with each other anyway. I hope this is the last analysis of “The Decision” that we read about going forward. What’s done is done.
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.
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.
Billy King makes his first trip to Springfield. Coincidentally, so do I. (That’s not me in the picture, though.)
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.