TrueHoop Lakers Blogger Kurt Helin writing for NBC about the concept of LeBron James and Dwayne Wade playing together: The interesting part would be finding a team with the cap space to sign both of them, even at a reduced price, and that has a core of quality role players to put around them. Oddly, the two-win New Jersey Nets, with emerging center Brook Lopez and some other quality young players and plenty of cap space, might not be a bad place.
The Record’s Ian O’Connor writes about team President Rod Thorn and how he was influenced by his father Joe, a World War II veteran: So if people think Rod Thorn is unraveling over this legacy-buster of a season, one that could be his last if the Russian billionaire buying the Nets says so, they never met the fighter who shaped him, the Marine once left for dead on the shores of Iwo Jima.
Fred Kerber of the New York Post looks at some of the worst NBA teams of all-time and where the Nets might fall in line: The Nets want to avoid being the worst ever and to do so they need 10 wins. After that, they would like to avoid being the worst Nets team ever and if you’ve paid any attention over the past quarter century plus you know there have been some bad, bad teams.
Kiki Vandeweghe and Del Harris got to run their second full-practice together yesterday: “We tried to clean up and re-emphasize the things that are important, like getting out and running, attacking early, making sure that we clean up a little bit on the pick-and-roll,” Vandeweghe said.
Expect the Atlantic Yards project to go through its final approvals today, even if some state politicians are still talking about fighting it.
Ben Couch writes, the return of Yi Jianlian is perfectly timed as the Nets are going up against one of the better rebounding teams in the NBA tonight: “Well, look – they’re going to get rebounds,” Vandeweghe said. “They’re big, good rebounders. They rebound against everybody in the league, and they’re obviously a lot better with Kevin Love. To me, what we have to do is make sure we still focus on what we want to do. We’re building now. We’ll play the games, we’ll do our best, but we’re going to focus on ourselves and getting to the things we do well. The opponent is the opponent.”
The stupid debate about how the Nets are too awful for Brook Lopez to make an all-star team continues over at Dime: But with the Nets having just 2 victories under their belt after 28 games, it would be almost impossible to justify voting in Lopez. Regardless, Lopez should be a lock for the Rookie/Sophomore game and will one day soon play in the real All-Star game.
Celtic Hub’s Zach Lowe takes a tour of the NBA Store in New York City, and calls one Nets-related jersey, “the single most depressing jersey in the store.”
Prospective Nets owner and Russian Billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov is still making deals to get richer.
