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According to Brian Lewis of the New York Post, Willie Reed has left the Brooklyn Nets for the remainder of the season due to "personal reasons."
Willie Reed is away from the team for personal reasons for the rest of the season. #nets
— Brian Lewis (@NYPost_Lewis) April 6, 2016
It's interesting timing, of course. Reed, the 25-year-old rookie, has played sparingly over the last month, picking up 6 DNPs and being listed as "inactive" three times. The Nets, who are simply riding out the season, would seem to need a big like Reed, after they shut down Brook Lopez for the remainder of the season.
Reed, however, has been unhappy with the direction of coach Tony Brown, having posted on social media about his former coach, Lionel Hollins.
Reed averaged about 10.5 min. under Hollins. Under Tony Brown, less than 9 min and 13 CD-DNP's (via Willie Reed IG) pic.twitter.com/JkZbDCzarL
— Anthony Puccio (@APOOCH) March 24, 2016
Things seemed to go sour for Reed after posting (then deleting) this picture to his Instagram account. Tony Brown talked about it before Brooklyn's 104-95 victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers.
"It's nothing personal against Willie," Brown said. "It's obvious he's had some success in some parts of the season and it's not a knock against him. There's a lot of guys that are not getting the minutes they were getting before. I've expressed to them that there will be different scenarios going forward and we just have to deal with it. There's going to be different guys on the inactive list and he just happened to be the guy tonight. Sorry he's frustrated with that, but that's what way it's gonna go going forward and if he has any displeasure with that he should probably talk to me about that."
Reed will be an unrestricted free agent unless the Nets decide to label him a restricted free agent before June 30. That appears unlikely.
The Brooklyn Nets did announce today that they signed Henry Sims for the remainder of the season, which is a good thing, since he now becomes the primary big for the team as the Nets now have only 11 active players.
We'll post updates as we learn more.