The New Jersey Nets have a new coach in Avery Johnson and a new owner in Russian Billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov who is telling everyone he knows that his New Jersey Nets will make the playoffs this season and win a championship in the next five seasons. While the fans may be eating the rhetoric up, Avery Johnson is not so sure the turnaround can come that quickly but knows a thing or two about turnarounds. "We can go from worst to first," Johnson said.
After cleaning house at the end of last season, the team acquired Chris Douglas-Roberts, Rookie Damion James, Quinton Ross, Anthony Morrow, Jordan Farmar and Travis Outlaw.
After enduring the first 16 losses of the new season, the franchise made a move in releasing head coach Lawrence Frank and assigning GM Kiki Vandeweghe as the new man in charge. The team, who traded star Vince Carter in a cap clearing move in the offseason, has struggled mightily. In late December, the team became the sixth NBA franchise to lose 28 of its first 30 games.
In the draft, the Nets had the 11th overall pick and chose small forward Terrence Williams who has made some impact on the team as he is averaging 8.5 ppg and 4.0 rpg in almost 23 minutes a game. In the Vince Carter trade, the Nets received Rafer Alston, Tony Battie and Courtney Lee. Both Lee and Alston are playing well while Tony Battie is struggling and averaging 2.0 ppg. while shooting .333.
There are still some legal wrangling going on in reference to the franchise moving to the city of Brooklyn but the franchise and the NBA are still saying that the team will play in Brooklyn in the 2011/12 season.
Come out and support your New Jersey Nets as they attempt to jell and compete for the Atlantic Division Title.
The franchise now known as the New Jersey Nets began life in the ABA (American Basketball Association) back in 1967 and were a strong team then, winning ABA Championships in 1974 and 1976. Originally known as the New York Americans and played in New York. But because the New York Knicks dominated the city, no business wanted to incur the wrath of the Knicks by letting a rival team play in its facility. Rather than folding up, the franchise found a spot in Teaneck, New Jersey and relocated the team there, changing the squad name to the New Jersey Americans while the franchise remained the New York Americans.
In their second season in Jersey, the team was forced to move back to New York and settled on Long Island and renamed the team to the New York Nets (to go with the New York Jets and Mets.) They would stay in New York and in 1974 won the ABA Championship, a feat repeated in 1976. When the ABA and the NBA merged in the summer of 1976 the Nets, along with the Denver Nuggets, Indiana Pacers and the San Antonio Spurs came into the NBA. The team was then forced to trade Julius “Dr. J” Erving to the Philadelphia 76ers to pay an NBA imposed $4.8 million fine for “invading” the New York Knicks territory. Before the beginning of the 1977/78 season, the franchise moved back to New Jersey and renamed the team the New Jersey Nets where they would play at the Rutgers Athletic Center until the Meadowlands Sports Complex was completed. The first few years in Jersey, the team would struggle.
The team saw an upswing in the early 80’s when legendary player/coach Larry Brown joined the team as the new Head Coach. While leading them through their best season in the NBA, Brown decided to take the head coach position with the University of Kansas. The league suspended him for the rest of the season and the team would fail to recover, losing to the New York Knicks in the first round of the NBA Playoffs.
Jason Kidd arrived in New Jersey in 2001 after a trade with the Phoenix Suns and went on to complete the best season the Nets ever had, finishing 52-30 and the first seed in the Eastern Conference. They eliminated the Pacers, the Hornets and the Celtics to advance to their first NBA Finals where they would face the LA Lakers. They would fall to the Shaq/Kobe led Lakers, swept in four games.
The Nets would repeat as Atlantic Division Champions the following season and finished the year with a 49-33 record and would again win out through to the NBA Finals where they faced the Twin Towers in the San Antonio Spurs. The Spurs would win the title in Game 6 on the road.
The Nets would win one more Division Title in 2006 (their last) and would be eliminated by the Indiana Pacers in the first round of the 2006 NBA Playoffs.
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