Their roster is full of players that are all pretty good, but none of them is really great. I used to think Deron was elite, but he hasn't shown these days the ability to really control a game the way Paul or even Rondo does. So maybe they should be a few games over .500, but I wouldn't blame Avery as much as I would the GM for their record. A starting front court of Lopez and Humphreys is soft, while their subs (Blatche and Evans) are more rugged. Avery was probably just trying to make up for Lopez's softness by reducing Humphreys' role. But a DNP-CD is pretty embarrassing for a player getting paid 12M that came in as the starter (although he seems to have a high tolerance for humiliation with the whole Kardashian debacle). It's got to affect the lockerroom with a guy that is supposed to have a big role on the team brooding at the end of the bench on top of whatever criticisms Deron had on rotations. Why not just play him off the bench in limited minutes? He's a decent rebounder after all.
Brooklyn has a mediore roster. Williams is a star, but JJ and Brook Lopez are fool's gold while Humphries is basically just a rebounder.
Well, there is a 99% chance that the roster, rather than Avery Johnson, is to blame for their malaise. However, the Nets kind of have to try something for that 1% chance that a coaching change actually sparks something. Also, I think a lot of commentators are right to say that the Nets are not much better than a .500 team talent-wise. The problem, however, isn't so much their current .500-ish record, but their recent string of well-below-.500 level performances and players (at least Deron) looking/sounding dispirited and looking like they are losing faith in the coach. A coach may be able to survive losses, but he cannot survive his player's loss of faith and spirit. Edit: This quote from GM Billy King confirms what I thought: <blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>More King: "Watching us, we just didn't have the same fire than when we were 11-4...it was a pattern."</p>— David Aldridge (@daldridgetnt) <a href="https://twitter.com/daldridgetnt/status/284404905073074178" data-datetime="2012-12-27T21:06:28+00:00">December 27, 2012</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
D-Will gets a bad rap for what happened in Utah. During a Jazz/Bulls game, DWill broke off 2 different plays Sloan called. At halftime Sloan confronted DWill on it, and the two had a heated argument over it. After the game Sloan talked with Kevin O'Conner and Greg Miller wanting DWill suspended for not running the plays Sloan called, and for the argument in the locker room. Both KOC and Greg Miller agreed they weren't going to suspend DWill so Sloan resigned over it. Sloan's resignation had more to do with Jazz management than it did with DWill.
I get why the Nets fired him--needed to increase the variance, cuz the mean was looking pretty bad. The big part of the blame should be pinned on the ownership for insisting on overpaying the likes of soft front-court players in Lopez and Humphreys, while settling on good complementary pieces in JJ and Wallace when they should've kept their eye on the prize and held out for a real star to put next to Deron. But Deron shouldn't get off the hook either. Every time things don't go really well for him, he blames the coach but doesn't take any responsibility himself because he bought into the hype that he's a superstar and should be winning. He's not a superstar though. If he were, he'd take a team of pretty good players further than this. When the team is mediocre, it taps into his insecurity about really belonging in the conversation with the real superstars and he lashes out.
So, here's a question: Given the way that Dwight has looked as Laker this year, how do you think the Nets would look at the moment had they been able to acquire Dwight?
