PaullyInNYC

How many roster spots do the NJ Nets have left?

CityGuy

They have 1 more spot left but I think they are gonna try and trade jeff mcinnis and they already attempted to get rid of Zoran Planinic, but that fell through. So althoug they have one spot opening, i wouldnt be surprised to see a few more changes.

CityGuy

The Nets' last roster spot is being left open with the hope of finding a shooter. Two free-agent names being closely monitored are Eddie House of Phoenix and Kareem Rush, who was waived from Charlotte last season after conflicts with coach Bernie Bickerstaff. So either one of those two or Deven Jorge are still in the mix.

CityGuy

Al Harringtons deal is officially off with the Indiana Pacers. Now can the NJ native land a job with the Nets??
I could see giving up Collins and McInnis for Harrington, it could work if you ad a draft pick....

PaullyInNYC

The New Jersey Nets were pretty quiet this offseason. The only big news right now is Vince Carters contract. He has reiterated to Rod Thorn that he wants to stay with the New Jersey Nets and promised not to make his contract a distraction.

bigapple

Nets Season Preview
Nets’ Hopes Riding on Three Main Attractions

The Nets begin the season Wednesday night and are counting on Richard Jefferson, Jason Kidd and Vince Carter.

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J., Oct. 31 — Vince Carter’s game face overlooks Eighth Avenue in Manhattan from a billboard on the side of a Times Square movie theater. Smaller images of Jason Kidd and Richard Jefferson appear in the background.

The three players are the Nets’ main attractions, but their future as a starring cast could rest with the 29-year-old Carter.

He can opt out of the final year of his contract at the end of this season. If the Nets do not get closer to a title than last season’s second-round playoff exit against the Miami Heat, Carter might be tempted to look elsewhere, perhaps even to his native Florida to play for the young and improving Orlando Magic.

So the Nets begin the regular season at home Wednesday night against the Toronto Raptors, once again pinning their hopes on the strength of their three-man nucleus. Publicly, they are not placing a timetable on their success, even if the pressure to win is evident.

“My focus is on this team and the importance of this year for us,” Carter said. “Contract wouldn’t matter if I didn’t have a good year and come to play.”

The Nets have not seriously contended for a title since Carter joined them a season and a half ago. And it is uncertain how much Kidd, 33, has left in his knees.

The backup power forward Clifford Robinson, who will turn 40 in December, said: “This year’s a big year for us. We definitely want to make it farther, trying to get to the finals, trying to come out of the East.”

Determining when a core unit has reached its potential is not an exact science, several N.B.A. executives and players said.

Rod Thorn, the Nets’ president, said he was firm in his belief that his team was close.

“Sometimes, what you do is, you have something that’s pretty doggone good that really needs to be changed around the edges, not necessarily core-wise,” he said. “In my opinion, if we had been stronger off the bench last year, we could have played with anybody out there.”

With that in mind, Thorn made minimal changes in the off-season, bringing in the veterans Eddie House, a guard, and Mikki Moore, a power forward. He drafted two players from Connecticut, Marcus Williams and Josh Boone, and one from Arizona, Hassan Adams.

Thorn said he hoped the new pieces would fit into the team’s plan to return to the up-tempo style that helped it reach the N.B.A. finals in 2002 and 2003.

A statistic that the N.B.A. is introducing this season may justify Thorn’s belief in his starting five of Carter, Kidd, Jefferson, Jason Collins and Nenad Krstic. When the Nets’ starters were on the court last season, they outscored opponents by 278 points, second most in the league behind the Detroit Pistons.

But the upside of the Nets’ starting unit remains a question.

Collins, 27, is a solid low-post defender, though not much more. Kidd is one of the league’s best all-around players. And Carter is one of the most prolific scorers around, although his playoff performances have not always been dominant. Jefferson, 26, and Krstic, 23, embody the Nets’ long-term potential.

Jefferson, a tireless worker who is entering his prime, has made strides each season, particularly in creating his own shots and improving his outside shooting. The Nets say that Krstic can become one of the most versatile centers in the N.B.A. because of his accurate shooting. He must work on his strength and defense.

As much as the Nets like their roster, others do not necessarily see it the same way. In a recent survey of 28 of the league’s 30 general managers, no one picked the Nets to win the Eastern Conference title. The Nets were heavily favored to win the Atlantic Division title for the fifth time in six seasons.

In four of the past five years, the team that defeated the Nets in the playoffs went on to win the title. Such success is reason enough, Jefferson said, to keep the team together.

“Everyone talks about breaking up our team and changing things,” he said. “If you keep losing to the champion, you’re doing something right more than you’re doing something wrong. We have a good team here.”

Still, another early playoff exit would be disappointing for this team and its New Jersey fan base, which could be growing antsy given the Nets’ coming move to Brooklyn.

Thorn may not seem eager to make any drastic moves now, but what could change his mind? “If we’d just, over the course of the season, just played fair,” he said. “That we didn’t show any growth — just showed we’ve gone as far as we can go, and we can’t go any further.”

Thorn would not attach a record or a playoff result to that assessment.

In previous seasons, contending for a title has been enough for team executives to keep their central players together.

For 18 seasons, the Utah Jazz tinkered around the inside-outside combination of Karl Malone and John Stockton. The Jazz made it to the N.B.A. finals twice but never won.

From 1987 through 1993, the Portland Trail Blazers relied on the dynamic backcourt of Clyde Drexler and Terry Porter and a frontcourt of Jerome Kersey and Kevin Duckworth. Although they reached the N.B.A. finals in 1990 and 1992, — the Nets’ Robinson was on both of those teams — the Trail Blazers did not win a title.

Knowing when to break up a nucleus comes from a gut feeling, said Donnie Walsh, the president of the Indiana Pacers. Walsh retooled his team after it lost to the Los Angeles Lakers in the 2000 N.B.A. finals.

“When I looked at the team, I just knew they had given me everything they got, and it’s gone now,” Walsh said in a recent telephone interview.

He kept the face of the franchise, Reggie Miller, but traded Dale Davis for Jermaine O’Neal. He waived Chris Mullin and watched Rik Smits retire. In his final seasons, Miller often deferred to the younger players but was still a clutch shooter and a leader.

The Nets hope to set themselves up for a similar transition, especially with Williams, a rookie point guard, learning from Kidd.

But Kidd is not quite ready to give up on the Nets’ current formula.

“When you keep a core of guys together that are talented,” he said, “you got to play it out and see what happens.”

PaullyInNYC

The new jersey nets started their new season yesterday with a win. They beat the Toronto Raptors 102-92. The New Jersey Nets had the perfect answer for the Toronto Raptors' new run-and-gun game: Jason Kidd and Vince Carter.
Kidd had 14 points, 10 assists and 10 rebounds for his 76th career triple-double, Carter added 25 points and 11 rebounds, and the Nets beat the Raptors 102-92 on Wednesday night.
Kidd stole the show in the final quarter with eight points, four assists and four rebounds. The point guard had four points and three assists in a quarter-opening, 18-8 spurt that gave New Jersey a 92-78 lead in what had been a closely contested contest.
Richard Jefferson, the other member of the Nets' big three, added 16 points, while Nenad Krstic and Bostjan Nachbar had 14 points apiece.

CityGuy

The New Jersey Nets are having a rough start to the season. They are now 11-16 but with a week division they are very much alive in the early season race. Personally I like the way the Nets play they just need to be more competitive and I believe their winning ways will surely come.

SwimCoach

Vince Carter scored only 12 points in the Nets' loss after posting 28 points against the Pistons the previous night. Carter has played 132 pairs of games on consecutive days during his career and his scoring average in the second of those games (21.9 PPG) is 2.8 points-per-game lower than his average in all other games (24.7), the largest such decrease for any current NBA player with at least 50 pairs of back-to-back games.

The Nets big three of Vince Carter (12), Jason Kidd (11) and Richard Jefferson (11) combined for 34 points on 11-for-40 shooting. New Jersey was 24-of-73 from the field, including just 3-of-16 from 3-point range, in losing its fourth straight game.

PaullyInNYC

Jason Kidd enduring the embarrassment of an ugly divorce from his pinup wife is big news. Kidd getting traded in the middle of what arguably is the best season of his career at age 33? That would be bigger.

Watching Kidd play point guard for these past six seasons, even though it's been in New Jersey, has been like watching Babe Ruth play baseball, we soon will understand. Unfortunately, there is a real chance that Kidd will wind up in another city - not just a borough - before that realization has a chance to take hold.

Nets president Rod Thorn wouldn't comment yesterday on a report that the Nets recently tossed Kidd's name into their evolving trade discussions.

"Any conversation I've had about a player is a confidential conversation," Thorn said. "That's how I look at it. Obviously, there are some people who don't look that way at conversations like that."

Although the Nets have won six of eight after fighting through a woeful start while beset by injuries, Thorn hasn't stopped picking up his phone with the trade deadline a little more than a month away.

"Jason's been in the league a long time," Thorn said. "And he knows that sometimes what's written has a basis in truth and sometimes it's mere speculation."

But when the Chicago Tribune reported Sunday that a general manager who called the Nets to inquire about Vince Carter instead was asked about his interest in Kidd, it smelled a lot more like truth than speculation.

Thorn is too smart to be fooled by a little success, and he can see that winning the division with his current roster would be little more than a booby prize, with a first-round playoff exit.

Although Thorn isn't ready to do anything drastic yet, he made it clear that no player on his roster is untouchable. That includes Kidd, whose inspired play since filing for divorce from his wife of 10 years, Joumana, might wind up making him more valuable as a trade pawn.

"I'm not going to comment on any conversations I may or may not have had about any of our players," Thorn said. "Let's just say I've had conversations about every one of them."

For a clue as to which teams would be hottest for Kidd, just look at who was fawning over Allen Iverson a few weeks ago. The Pacers, Celtics and Heat need a point guard. Kidd would lift the Clippers or Kings off the doormat or make the Lakers challengers in the West.

The Nets already have Kidd's replacement, rookie Marcus Williams, so they'd want a big man in return. Given that Kidd turns 34 in March and is due $41 million over the next two seasons, a potential suitor's desperation to win would have to collide with the Nets' desire to get younger and less burdened by distractions.