Lionel Hollins On Brooklyn Nets: ‘We’re A Work In Progress’
By Phil Watson
The Brooklyn Nets laid an egg in their opener Wednesday night, getting crushed by the Boston Celtics 121-105.
Speaking to Mike Lupica on ESPN New York 98.7 on Thursday, coach Lionel Hollins asked for patience.
"“We’re a work in progress,” Hollins said. “We haven’t had as much work as we would’ve liked after going on the China trip. We didn’t really have the days of practice that we would’ve liked, but it’s all part of growing and becoming a good team.”"
This seems as good a time as any to go on a tangent about the moronic nature of the NBA’s global domination initiative.
The preseason and training camp are a time for all 30 teams to get ready to go through the rigors of an 82-game schedule in an effort to reach the playoffs.
Yet the NBA is not shy about disrupting those efforts to suit its own bottom line, such as shipping teams off to Europe (bad enough) and Asia (worse still) in the preseason.
Travel experts say that recovery from international travel depends on the number of time zones crossed.
In the case of the Nets, they were literally halfway across the world—a 12-hour time difference exists between Brooklyn and Shanghai, where the Nets played the Sacramento Kings on Oct. 12, and Beijing, where the same two teams met on Oct. 15.
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That means the Nets would have been feeling just about back to normal by Monday, two days before the opener. So, yeah, the quality of the work they got done between getting back to the U.S. and opening the season probably wasn’t terrific.
Brooklyn played without center Brook Lopez, out with a sprained foot, and is integrating new parts—specifically backup guard Jarrett Jack and small forward Bojan Bogdanovic—into the roles that were occupied last year by Shaun Livingston, now with the Golden State Warriors, and Paul Pierce, who opted to sign with the Washington Wizards.
Mason Plumlee started in place of Lopez and was very efficient in the time he was able to stay on the floor, going 2-for-2 with four rebounds and two blocks. But foul trouble limited Plumlee to just 11 minutes and as a result, Brooklyn wound up going small, playing Jack 30 minutes and Alan Anderson 25, while Kevin Garnett logged just 23 minutes.
And based on an extremely small sample size, one has to at least begin to wonder if Andrei Kirilenko will ever again be a productive player. The 33-year-old AK-47 fired blanks in the opener, going 0-for-3 in a 10-minute cameo and finishing with three points and three rebounds.
American newcomer Bogdanovic will go through some adjustment woes, as well. In Europe, teams will practice twice a day and play once a week. The NBA schedule is reversed—teams will practice perhaps once per week while playing four or five games.
Bogdanovic had seven points in 26 minutes in his NBA debut, but backup Mirza Teletovic helped keep Brooklyn in the game as long as they did stay in it by dropping 20 points in 23 minutes, hitting 8-of-11 overall and 4-of-6 from deep.
A positive sign was Deron Williams being able to go a team-high 39 minutes coming off ankle surgery. His shot was rusty—6-for-16, 0-for-3 from long range—but he had eight assists and a couple of steals.
Frankly, that’s much more productive than many analysts were predicting, as many have all but written off the 30-year-old who is a three-time All-Star, two-time U.S. Olympian and was once—not all that long ago—in the discussion with Chris Paul over which one of them was the game’s best point guard.
Hollins is encouraged and thinks the team we see now is but a mere shadow of the team we’ll see later in the year.
"“I still believe we’re going to get there, but it’s going to take a lot of work by us as coaches and by the players as well,” Hollins said. “I think they’re willing to put in the work and we’re not going to be the same team in January and February.”"
One would hope not—it’s hard to be too encouraged by a blowout loss to a team that is in the midst of a massive rebuilding project.
Turnovers were a huge issue in the opener—the Nets surrendered 25 points off 21 giveaways and that is something that can’t wait until January or February to improve.
Garnett and Williams were the primary offenders, each turning the rock over four times as Boston rookie Marcus Smart had four steals in his NBA debut.
Oh, and it would probably be good for Hollins—the former coach of the old grit-and-grind, defensive-minded Memphis Grizzlies—could get his guys to hold teams to a little bit less than 55.7 percent shooting.
A work in progress? Definitely. We’ll see how much in progress the Nets are when they host the Detroit Pistons on Saturday night.