Lionel Hollins: “I take the blame” — Around the Nets

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Here’s the latest Nets news and notes from around the ‘Nets:

  • Lionel Hollins took the blame for the team’s miscommunication in crunch time, per ESPN’s Mike Mazzeo. The full quote: “As I told (the players), I take the blame. I must’ve gotten distracted, because I was looking and I don’t know if I thought somebody got fouled — whatever — but I was looking up at the court, and when I look back, Bogie (Bojan Bogdanovic) was over there (guarding Dwyane Wade) and he was looking at me and I’m yelling ‘Foul!’ But then Paul (Westphal) says, ‘It’s too late now,’ and I looked up at the clock and I said, ‘You’re right, no fouls.’ So we played it out, and we got the ball back with 11 seconds to go. But in that situation, you score and you play. You don’t score, you’ve got to foul again and we can extend the game. It’s not like it was the play that lost us the game. Our problem was trying to stop Dwyane Wade down the stretch, and we weren’ t able to do that.”

  • Hollins taking the blame didn’t do much to slow down the fan, uh, fanning the flames under his hot seat. NetsDaily took a deep dive into the Russian report — and reporter — that said Hollins was a goner once the team found a replacement, and found that even if the report isn’t legit, his access was.

  • This is not a good look for Barclays Center security officials.
  • Injury updates: Thomas Robinson (illness) and Wayne Ellington (strained left shoulder) are questionable for Friday night’s Nets-Pacers game. Sergey Karasev (ankle) and Shane Larkin (concussion) are both out. If Robinson and Ellington can’t play, the Nets will only dress nine healthy players.

  • Before many Nets games, middle-schoolers and high-schoolers get a shot to play on Barclays Center. Here’s one such story.

  • The Nets & Barclays Center operations are reportedly worth $1.9 billion, according to the latest valuations. But Mike Ozanian of Forbes is not convinced.