With the Brooklyn Nets slumping despite Monday’s home win over the Clippers, and trade rumors swirling around the team’s highest paid players, at least two Nets players would welcome the return of center Andray Blatche, who spent the first five months of the season in China. Brooklyn, Memphis and Miami are among atleast three teams interested in Blatche, according to ESPN New York, whose Chinese club failed to reach the postseason, making the volatile nine-year vet a free agent. So would Nets players
Bernucca: Who Deserves to be an All-Star Reserve?
Every team wants a player in the NBA All-Star Game. Just this week, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban complained that the voting system is “absolutely, positively broken” and lobbied for the NBA to provide additional roster spots for reserves who may have been overlooked by the fans. His reasoning was that leading vote-getter Stephen Curry received a mere 1.5 million votes, which is a miniscule total when you consider the global, electronic balloting process. As he often does, Cuban made some good
Celtics and Nets largely unaffected by experimental 44-minute game
Adding some small degree of excitement to what would have been a dull, mundane preseason game at the Barclays Center, the league conducted an experiment with the Celtics and Nets playing 11-minute quarters on Sunday. In addition to the one fewer minute per quarter, there were two media timeouts in the second and fourth quarters instead of the normal three. The shorter 44-minute long game, the first one in NBA history, ended in a pleasant one hour and 58 minutes with the Celtics
Scotto: Jason Kidd Burns Brooklyn Bridge With Nets
Jason Kidd didn’t just burn a bridge with the Nets. He basically set it ablaze with an entire gas station’s fuel supply. Once groomed to be the face of the franchise, Kidd will now have all his images removed from Barclays Center – perhaps even his retired jersey hanging from the rafters. [Read more…]
Sprung: Nets should hope Kevin Garnett retires
Realistically, the Brooklyn Nets don’t have room for Kevin Garnett next season. Garnett had by far the worst statistical season of his career in 2013-2014, capped off by a two-point, eight-rebound performance in Wednesday’s Game 5 loss to Miami that eliminated Brooklyn. Garnett scored 24 points total in the five games against the Heat and is a sad shell of his former self on the floor. Garnett is scheduled to make $12 million next season in the final year of his contract and is considering
Scotto: Brooklyn’s Gamble on Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce Failed; Uncertainty Ahead
When the Brooklyn Nets acquired Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Jason Terry last summer, Mikhail Prokhorov said, “Today, the basketball gods smiled on the Nets.” Neither Garnett, Pierce nor Prokhorov was smiling after the Miami Heat eliminated Brooklyn in the Eastern Conference semifinals in five games. “The only reason we came to Brooklyn was to win another ring,” Garnett said. In retrospect, Brooklyn took a gamble that didn’t pay off. The Nets gave up a king’s ransom to acquire Garnett and Pierce to
Sprung: Purpose of Pierce, Garnett in question after Nets’ Game 5 loss
Why did the Nets acquire Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett from Boston last offseason, mortgaging key future assets to do so? To help win a championship? To be on the floor in important moments in the playoffs, where their championship experience and leadership would prove invaluable to a team that previously had no players with real, legitimate postseason success? In the most important moments in the Brooklyn Nets’ season, the final minutes of the team’s Game 5 loss in Toronto, Pierce and
Scotto: Midseason Report Cards for Knicks and Nets
Before the season, championship expectations were attached to both the Knicks and the Nets. The Knicks were coming off the team’s first season with at least 50 or more wins and a trip to the Eastern Conference semifinals since the 1999-2000 campaign, when Jeff Van Gundy patrolled the sidelines, Patrick Ewing wrapped up his final season in New York and Allan Houston was in the prime of his career. The Nets were coming off their first trip to the playoffs in six years