Hollinger: Nets Are Worse Than You Think

Have we tanked, absolutely, but it has not been that bad. We have played well the last 4 games and we are showing some life. These have been winnable games. Yi is a robot. He does not have soft hands at all. All he does is fumble the ball on the pass. He is at best a catch and shoot pf. Misjudge young talent… I know Thorn have had his bad draft but T-Will was not a bad pick-up on draft night. We did not get blair because he had injury problems (Both Knees) and we couldn’t take that chance. So we got a safe pick who can play D, pass, dribble… but just can’t shoot. Traded stars late… I don’t think so. What I was reading with the “big three” was nothing to do cartwheels over.
It has been bad but there are glimpses. I really like CDR coming off the bench, it gives him more freedom to be aggressive. But Yi has to learn to catch the damn ball.

Haha Yi is a robot… He’s right about that.

Gee, I wonder what changed when the Nets went from bad to worse….

FIRE KIKI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hollah!

Duh, this is the poorest exuse for an NBA team I have ever seen and now they appear to have started choking. This idea of playing the kids and allowing them to have time on the floor to mature has really back fired. This season has done them more harm than good.

They have won 3 of the 4 games under Kiki.

Agreed.

We didn’t trade our stars to late. Why would we trade them when we still were competitive? The year we weren’t competitive we traded them

@dj Says:

“…This season has done them more harm than good.”
That’s what worries me. When there is some spirit, rowdy defense played (like ther last 5 games), thats ok, but that last western road trip when they got blown out again and again cant be good for a player. Impressionable kids. I want to see CDR Pez DH TWill CLee have long valuable NBA careers, not turn into damaged goods.

Only way from here is UP…but what a disgrace for a season.

I honestly feel that this story of the Nets is going to be a memorable one. It has that feeling of a story book ending. I can read the headlines now:

“The Nets, from worst to best” in a couple of years. Sometimes you just have to be patient, but i feel it will happen. Here’s to the future!

Brook Lopez should not be tarnished by a phony like Rod and a fraud like Harris. Brook is only 21 and easily the best player on this team, no matter what delusional Rod and Kiki might say

Damaged goods is exactly what I was thinking. Not so much with Lopez and Lee but CDR and TWILL are spoiled, immature kids who have never been told no and have succeeded at basketball for their entire life. I think the best case scenario with them is that they will be successful on another team.

It didn’t help that we were injured to start the season. It will be only fitting to have the worst season to the best off-season.

Devin Harris regressed physically and emotionally
 Agree. Harris just doesn’t seem to be the same player.

They traded their stars too late
 It’s a toss up for me.

They misjudged young talent
Agree

They have no home court
 Mostly agree, but I felt things will be different if they move to Newark

They have no money
 100 % Agree

The veterans were worse than they had any right to expect
Agree

The fact is that all the Nets Players are young…most are 1, 2, 3 years guys..ages 21, 22. …of course they all gonna make mistakes and need to learn the game and improve..no one the future and how will they improve..

These sportswrite dont play the game…they think they know it all…please..homie. u know jack….lolz

I think Vince’s contract would have expired in the summer of 2011 if I’m remembering correctly, would’ve been alot better for this team in all aspects had they just kept him. They won’t be making a very big turnaround in 2010 at all anyway.

We hate this guy for being right all the time don’t we???

Get Iggy and Jason Smith From Sixers For Yi, Lee, and Simmons+Pick

Looks like he wrote this article a few weeks ago. Doesn’t take a genius in stats to know the nets were worse for a while then the start of the season. But they are DEFINATELY getting better than that garbage road trip. Sloppy work Hollinger.

@Antoine
carter’s contract runs out in 2012. That year, his contract calls for him to make $18 million OR be bought out for $4 million. At the least, he is owed $37.2 million: $33.2 million for 2009-10 and 2010-11, plus the $4 million.

Look at VC and RJ this year. As someone wrote recently, they are the two biggest disappointments among off season acquisitions.

Hollinger has been saying the Nets should have begun rebuilding earlier since 2006. He may have been right, considering what happened subsequently. But I don’t think they would have gotten as much for RJ if they had traded him a year before. The year before, he had missed 27 games…after missing 49 two years before that. The year he was traded he played 82, I believe, and was in the top ten scoring.

Heres to Brook Lopez and ten years of nets basketball. The best player on the team, continues to work hard and a total porfessional not to mention he’s a hilarious guy and some of his reactions playing ball are great.. He’s definately become my favourite Net.

It’s tanking, but I’m actually not sure it’s a strategy.

@Net Income

This may be very off topic, but with regards to the Carter trade for the Magic:

Carter expires in 2012…

the same time Chris Paul is on the market…. hmmmmm…

Carter could always resign for much less and become a Michael Finley type player after that…

@Net Income

What did we get for RJ? Salary cap and Yi. Yi hasn’t proven to be anything substantial as of yet. I’m happy with his progress from the year before but I’m still not convinced he CAN BE anything more than solid rotation player as of yet. Its not like we won the lottery with that trade.

Apologies for caps no way to bold and I wanted to emphasize that point.

In hindsight, the year RJ should have been traded was after the 2006 season. That’s probably when his value was highest. But that was a 49-win team, so there was no way they were going to break it up then.

Agreed though that was the right time to trade him. People thought we’d trade Carter because of his ankle injury, he was older and people like Magic saying he was on the decline that season. But obviously that would have been dumb since his value was down from the season while Jeferson comming off a career year without Jason Kidd for a lot of it value was probably never higher.

Thanks for the clarification on that NI

I wish we still had RJ and Carter to work with Harris and Lopez.

Does anyone remember in 07-08 when Frank force fed the offense with healthy doses of RJ?

I can remember there was this one play they ran over and over… RJ goes from right corner, takes the back screen from the F/C, curls to the top of the key and receives the pass from the weak side and shoots the mid range jumpshot.

Hollinger is a snake oil salesman. His formulas are wrong most of the time. The fact that his formulas initially predicting the Nets with more wins already prove his methods ineffective.

To cover up his lack of foresight, he write that how bad the Nets are, we all know how bad they are. I don’t need ESPN insider for that.

Hey Yormark, what happened to all those Yi jerseys you had made.

An automated sucking machine. We should call him Roomba.

malorkayel, you must not be familiar with the concept of cause & effect. Hollinger’s original prediction was when Frank was coaching and the team was playing hard. Once Kiki took over, the team laid down.

NI says:
“But I don’t think they would have gotten as much for RJ if they had traded him a year before.”

We got Yi and Simmons for RJ. Im not sure how the Nets could have done worse than that…seriously.

Im waiting for the day you admit they made a mistake on Yi. Im pretty sure Thorn kicks himself every day for making that move.

@JohnY

The cause of Frank getting fired was from the effect of losing 16 games in a row.

I’m saying, Hollinger and other metrics users tend make mistakes. But unlike conventional writers, these math guys have a tendency to rewrite history to cover up their flaw systems.

It’s never the fault of their metrics system… snakeoil.

I will say it again. Make a trade for a star now. change everyones mind about everything.

Hollinger is from Jersey!!!!????

We just don’t know how Yi has helped us with sponsors. I think that is the only reason they brought him in. They needed money and they got it.

Glad to finally see someone on the national scale finally putting in print what the intelligent Nets fans around here have been saying for about a year and a half: Devin Harris stinks.

"But I don’t think they would have gotten as much for RJ if they had traded him a year before."

I know hindsight is 20/20, but my good man…what in god’s name did we really get for RJ? It’s a wash at this point.

RJ Stinks. Cool. I guess we got at best a back up big man who is soft as charmin and has the basketball IQ of a log, and walking cap space.

“Frank Says:
February 4th, 2010 at 5:47 pm

I wish we still had RJ and Carter to work with Harris and Lopez."

Both of them stink, along with Harris. Sadly, we’d probably have 20 wins with them now instead of 4.

Imo Harris has not regressed. He was injured and the team stinks. He’s still the best PG we got and feeds Lopez better than anyone. He’s just a reflection of the team. I chalk up his bad year to health and motivation factors.
They didn’t trade their stars too late. The big 3 with a defensive big would have been a contender but I believe Ratner ran out of money and after Kidd couldn’t get an extension we dumped our stars to save money as a priority and getting talent back was secondary.
Having no “home court” is irrelevant. We’ve won big and lost big on the same court. Calling the fan base “puny” was cold.
The coaching has not been good but neither has the talent where it counts.
I think our young talent is fine. The problem is all the talent on the team other than Lopez, is small.
The plan was to be terrible this year. We went with Yi who could be the worst starting PF of all time and he’s the best we got. Thorn said it himself in so many words. “It’s better to be bad than mediocre”. Good decisions and money will make us better fast but not until next year.

@Dollar Bills

I agree with you completely 100% on Devin. But the trade of RJ was simply to get him off the books for this summer. Anything else they could have gotten was gravy. At this point, Yi is looking like bland, watery gravy at best, but he is still gravy. If the Nets are able to use their cap space effectively this summer, then the RJ trade (and the VC trade) will have been a success.

That said, I’ll repeat what I wrote on an earlier thread – the stink of this season will not wear off without drastic changes. Everybody must go – Thorn, Kiki, Yormark, players, everybody.

I agree with those who think the Nets have to make a deal for at least some more consistent “complementary pieces” if not a second star player to make this team even a little attractive to the James or Wade or Bosh or Stoudemire or even Johnson or Gay.

I’m for unloading just about any player here besides Lopez and maybe Harris to bring in a legit scoring 3 or 4 and/or a 4 who rebounds, defends, and intimidates.

Simmons’ contract works out well for deals for Igoudala (or Stoudemire, even if you have to toss in the likes of Boon or CDR or even Jianlian just to make it a little more appealing to the other team. And you can get pieces like Speights from Philly or Noah and Salmons from the Bulls with similar player swaps.

Or is this just shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic?

We should have traded Carter for Wally’s contract in 2008 after trading away RJ. I had advocated this several times with incredible resistance from several myopic fans back in 2008. We could have had an opportunity to draft a Curry or DeRozan in 09. Heck, we might have done so poorly that might have drafted Griffin or Evans.

Even with a top pick in 09, we would still have been in an excellent position to get a top 5 draft pick this year and would be a more attractive landing spot for a FA to boot.

Things will be a lot better if we get John Wall. He is not the only piece we need, but, he along with Brook would be two awesome building blocks. Maybe we can trade up in the draft and get a guy like Greg Monroe, along with Wall. Monroe can be our eventual starting 4.

Hang in there guys. Its gonna get better.

Draft Wall
Trade Harris, CDR, TWill, Boone, Lee, whoever
Sign a top FA
Sign a few complimentary players

or

Draft Turner
Trade CDR, Twill, Lee, whoever
Sign a top PF/C FA
Sign a few complimentary players

Either way the Nets are going to be a good team next year and will have a ton of upside

Hollinger is actually dead on for once.
The Nets new they werent going to be resigning Kidd, or trying to win period.
There should have been a fire sale when Kidd was traded.
Orlando and San Antonio are feeling it now.
VC and RJ are not worth their contracts now and wont be next year either.
Who would have signed VC or RJ to those deals a few years ago?? NOONE
KiKi and Thorn made some bad trades, draft picks, and signed bad free agents.
DH stopped playing defense when he was traded to NJ although LFrank gave him the green light on offense.
Yi is a robot
BS is a bum.
CLee is a role player.

“The Nets are justifiably proud of their 2008 draft, in which they took Lopez with the 10th pick, snagged Anderson 21st and grabbed a keeper in Chris Douglas-Roberts in the second round. Other than that, though, their past few drafts have been unmitigated disasters.”

(Hollinger article, “How the Nets went from to ugly”)

Ironic to note he considers CDR “a keeper”.

Lets keep crossing our fingers that we get Wall! He is a franchise changing player.

@ djheavyduty – All ex-Nets in terms of the impact they have had on their current teams:

Anthony Parker > Kenyon Martin > Jason Kidd >> Jason Collins >>>>>>>>> Richard Jefferson/Vince Carter/Brian Scalabrine/Eddie House.

The Nets are worse then I think? I think they are the worst team ever, Holllknger is wrong again.

“We should have traded Carter for Wally’s contract in 2008 after trading away RJ. I had advocated this several times with incredible resistance from several myopic fans back in 2008.”

no, I actually enjoyed the games last year. Trading Carter earlier probably would have caused me to no longer be a Nets fan. I don’t know how I am hanging on now, I guess because I have season tickets that I am too cheap to waste.

@Ispartan

I agree! Atleast, with the way Vince played for us, I felt we had a chance to win every night. We still only won 34 games two years in a row, but, that is a lot better than 4! The one thing that will make this season seem worth all this misery is if we get John Wall! He is a difference maker to a franchise.

The VC trade will probably go down as the biggest mistake that will come back to haunt the Nets. Even at his age, he has still shown how much he is still half-man half-amazing, but many of you wanted him gone just like JKidd. It’s sort of wrong to make such judgements on Harris, because this is his first full season with the Nets and things can change after this. If all the Nets players are contestants on the British gameshow “The Weakest Link”, then Anne Robinson, who is the host of that show, would say that many of you have eliminated the strongest links rather than the weaker links.