Empty the Bench

By: Zachariah Blott

The Nets avoided historical incompetence on Monday by winning their tenth game, ensuring that the 1972-73 Sixers remain the only team in league history to finish with a single-digit win total (9-73). This marks New Jersey’s third win in four games from March 24 to 29. Over that same stretch, the Lakers were 2-2, the Cavaliers were 2-1 (with a loss to the Spurs, who NJ downed for their 10th win), and the Nuggets were 1-3.

As numerous people have said all year, including soon-to-be free agent Amar’e Stoudemire after Phoenix thrashed the Nets 118-94 in January, the Nets are not as bad as their record indicates. They were struck with a ton of concurrent injuries in the first half of the year, including the loss of 2009 All-Star Devin Harris for 10 games during their record 18-game losing streak to start the season. They were this close to winning 3 of those 10, and weren’t far off in another 3 or 4, so his presence could have ended all the “worst ever” talk early on, relaxing the players just enough to get more on track. Maybe only 20-25 wins on track, but still.

Like I said, Harris wasn’t the only absence early on. Starting SG Courtney Lee missed 7 games during the 0-18 start, starting PF Yi Jianlian missed 20 of the team’s first 24 contests, SF Jarvis Hayes missed all but two minutes of the first 31 games, sixth man Chris Douglas-Roberts missed three trios of games before New Year’s, and back-up F/C Josh Boone missed a whole slew of time between Christmas and St. Patrick’s Day. Jersey’s back-ups aren’t that good, and like any sport, once you start losing so much and so often that the national media is talking about you, it kind of becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Well they’ve regrouped of late with the stated intention of reaching 10 wins. They did it, and even though that sound you hear is the collective exhale from the New Jersey locker room, it still needs to be pointed out that they’re not 10-64 bad. Their Pythagorean win total is 15 (so they should have won five more games at this point), one behind Minnesota, and respectably close to a handful of other teams. And again, that’s with all the injuries to most of their top players back when the crap really got rolling.

They’ve avoided strings of embarrassing blowouts recently, with 19 of their 24 losses over the past two months coming by 11 points or less. Two of their five big ones were the back ends of back-to-backs, and two more were against Cleveland and Atlanta. They’re quite consistent, like an archer who groups all of his arrows in the upper-left corner of the target. Now that everyone’s healthy, the Nets are doing better, and four more wins (possible) would pull them even with the truly hapless Timberwolves, who are on a 16-game skid of their own.

Soon they’ll be out of the 2009-10 season that once looked like it would never end, and they’ll have a decent core of youngsters, a ton of money to spend, a top-4 draft pick, and a new owner ready to infuse energy (read also: money) into this franchise on the verge of a 2012 move to Brooklyn.

Not too bad for a team pulling stunts like this earlier this month.

Zachariah Blott cannot recommend Rick Telander’s “Heaven Is A Playground” enough.

Devin Harris Photo Credit: Icon SMI

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