Last week, I asked, "If I gave you 5-1 odds that Lawrence Frank would be the coach of the New Jersey Nets by the end of the week, would you take that bet?"
Had anyone have actually taken me up on that bet, I'd be beating down your door trying to collect right now.
On Sunday afternoon, the Nets officially fired Lawrence Frank, the winningest coach in franchise history, and the longest tenured head coach in the Eastern Conference.
Later the same day, the Nets were embarrassed by the Lakers 106-87, in a game that wasn't nearly as close as the 19-point margin would indicate. The loss moves the Nets to 0-17 on the season, tied for the worst start to a season in NBA history. The combination of injuries and a complete lack of talent on the roster are the main reason for this historically bad start.
Having said that ... (sorry I couldn't help myself, I keep re-watching the "Curb" season finale on HBO), Lawrence Frank does deserve some of the blame for the 0-17 start.
Even at his best, Frank is no offensive genius. In his five full seasons as head coach, the Nets have never finished better than 15th in the NBA in points per game. Four of the five seasons, they ranked 24th or worse.
And while points per game isn't always an indicator of how good a team is offensively (some teams, the Nets for example, play at a much slower pace, meaning there are fewer possessions in a game, resulting in less scoring), there are other indicators that the Nets need a shift in philosophy if they are going to get out of this rut.
In Frank's five seasons, the Nets ranked, in order, 29th, 27th, 22nd, 26th, and 24th in the league in field goal percentage. This season they have the worst field goal percentage of all 30 NBA teams.
Some other factors that led to the firing:
The Nets lost 10 of the 16 games under Frank this season by double-digits.
They have lost 21 of their last 22 road games.
They have not increased their win total over the previous season in four years.
The Nets have not advanced past the second round of the playoffs under Frank after making back-to-back NBA Finals in the two seasons before he took over.
Having said that...
It's foolish to put all the blame on Lawrence Frank for the Nets' historically bad start.
Their roster is atrocious. I said in the preview that the only things I like about this team is Jay-Z owning 1.8% of them and Brook Lopez.
So far, I'm dead on with that one.
Through 17 games, Lopez is averaging 18.4 points per game, 9.1 rebounds, and 2.35 blocks per game while shooting 47% from the field and 80% from the free throw line. Those are All-NBA team-type numbers for a center.
Now look at the rest of the roster. Rafer Alston summed it up best when he compared them to a poker hand, calling this Nets team "a pair of 2s."
Chris Douglas-Roberts is their second leading scorer at 17.2 points per game, but that is more by default due to the minutes he's getting than anything else. His percentages across the board are right around where they were last season, he just happens to be playing three times more minutes than last season because of the injuries.
I think CDR has actually shown some flashes of being a solid pro this season, but when he's your best perimeter scorer, that's not acceptable.
Devin Harris, last season's top scorer, has played just six games this season due to injury.
Yi Jianlian has played four games.
Courtney Lee has played nine games.
The Nets injury report has five players listed as "out indefinitely" right now.
Those things aren't Lawrence Frank's fault. His job is to take the players on this roster and get the most out of what he's got to work with. As bad as it sounds, I think Frank has done just that.
0-17 is terrible, but what can you do with this team? Against the Blazers this week, the Nets started Lopez, Douglas-Roberts, Trenton Hassell, Josh Boone, and Rafer Alston. You try winning a game with that starting lineup.
On Sunday night against the Lakers, the Nets as a team were outscored by Kobe Bryant 13-12 in the first quarter.
The head coach is always the one who takes the fall in situations like this, but the bulk of the blame belongs to the "architects" of this team, Team President Rod Thorn and GM Kiki Vandeweghe.
Those are the guys the left Frank with bare cupboards going into the season and expected him to cook a five-course meal.
Having said that...
If the rumors of Kiki Vandeweghe taking over as head coach for the rest of the season are true, I'm all for it, for the same reason I liked Jeff Bower being selected as Byron Scott's successor in New Orleans.
Too often in the NBA GMs consistently put together terribly mismatched rosters season after season and then fire the head coach after a season or two he if can't win with the sorry team he's been handed.
Like every other professional sport, the NBA is a copycat league. I hope more teams in the league start taking the approach that the Hornets and (potentially) the Nets are taking by essentially telling the GM, "Okay, you can fire the head coach. But you put this group of players together, now go prove to me that they really can win games or you're next to be fired."
The sexy move around the league the past two seasons is to fire the head coach as soon as things get ugly. Just once I want an owner to step up to a GM and say, "You know what, I like our head coach, you just gave him nothing to work with" and fire a GM over a coach.
It's gotten to the point that I actually feel bad for the Nets and their fans. It's one thing when a team completely quits on a coach, but it's another to see a team work hard night after night only to come up woefully short. The Nets fought back to make the final score somewhat respectable against the Lakers on Sunday. They did the same thing on Friday night in Sacramento.
It's hard not to root for this team to start to put something together, so they can at least have something to show for all the effort they are giving.
Having said that...
The Nets have already tied a record for futility and are going nowhere fast. If you're going to be historically inept, don't be half-assed about it. The '73 Sixers only won nine games.
When you're playing with a pair of 2s, why not go all-in and see if you can't make something out of this season, even if that something is the record for fewest wins in a season?
After all, no one remembers 15-win teams, but no one will forget the worst team in NBA history.
And at this rate, there's a good chance that the 2009-10 Nets will be remembered.
Scott Shepherd writes about the NBA every Monday for Sports Central. His blog, Diary of an NBA Junkie, is updated several times a week.
December 3, 2009
Eric Engberg:
I would not put this fiasco squarely on Vandeweghe. He merely did what ownership told him to do. The Nets have been positioning themselves to try and make a big splash in free agency next summer.
They have roughly $25 million committed to salaries for next season meaning they should have $25 mil to spend next summer. That is why they dumped Vince Carter for next to nothing over the summer.
The Nets apparently believe someone like D-Wade or LeBron will be interested in playing with the young talent they have drafted over the past couple of years.