Game Thread: New Jersey Nets vs. New Orleans Hornets

[VCRJKidd15]

**** ***** ***** ****** **************** *********** ****** FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU***************************************************** *THE MOTHER *********** NETS they can go **************** themselves.........12 points in the ************* 4th quarter are you *************** serious?.....Deron Williams 9/24 good job bro....

[SteveNets15]

^lmao i'm glad i missed this game to

[vincecarter4pres]

This is going to be the straw that broke the camel's back.

I mean I thought he was gone anyway unless we make a top 3 jump and Billy is able to pull a miracle move off on draft night or Deron recognizes the type of player PEB or Thomas Robinson can be, then we nab a huge fish in the first couple days of free agency.

But at this point, with this loss, this is going to be the one that takes the benefit of the doubt away.

Don't land someone literally like Dwight, Love, LMA or maybe Josh Smith on draft night, or win the lotto and have Anthony Davis, he won't even wait around the first few days of free agency to see if we can extend Crash and land an Eric Gordon.
It will be 1st day of free agency and he either signs with Dallas or Portland or allows us to work a wack S&T to LAL or even NYK, which we would probably never do(Knix I mean).

[deepblueday]

gerald wallace looked slow on both ends. he hustles, sure, but hes lost more than I thought he had. honestly, this is one of the most absurd trades in nba history. just stunning that we gave up a mid to high lottery pick for a player of his caliber at this stage of his career who could very easily opt out in a few months. i dont know whether i should be rooting for that or not. king has **** this franchise to the point that even hopeless losing yields no hope.

[vincecarter4pres]

Eh I didn't think he looked slow, just tentative, which I expected on his first day here plus he probably doesn't want to risk injury for a team he doesn't even know if he's going to stay with.

But he did look underwhelming as all hell on offense. His shot looked flat and broken and he barely slashed at all, wasn't moving a lot without the ball, etc.

Now I know/knew he's not a very good offensive player or shooter, but he was just standing around inactive so much, just wasn't aggressive like I remembered him back in the day or quite truthfully even last year or this year in Portland.

Trade is an abomination.

I wouldn't have traded that pick for an extended prime Wallace until I knew what pick it was and what specific players were still on the board, as in on draft night.

[deepblueday]

yep the image of wallace i have is from his charlotte days, when even if he wasnt putting up stats he was just a flurry on the court, sprinting the break, helping defensively, hitting the boards hard on both ends, being aggressive with the ball. yeah, he had a few nice blocks last night, but that player just wasnt there. youre right i suppose, its possible he was just tentative in a new situation or very possibly he just doesnt want to be here, either way, without his insane floor game, its tough to overcome his broken jump shot.

btw marshon has done nothing but regress this season, on both ends. his defense has become unforgivable. hes so weak and slow on that end of the floor, he takes awful gambles , gets caught on every single screen, etc. he did A LOT to lose us that game yesterday.

and i agree that this feels like a game that will stick in derons mind. taking a home loss in an empty building to the worst team in the NBA missing its 3 best players after a flurry of optimistic talk about making a playoff push. this franchise is sickeningly close to falling off a cliff right now.

[DusterBuster]

Blazer fan coming in peace here. I was just browsing out of curiosity to see how Crash's 1st game as a Net went. Wallace is one of my Top 5 favorite players in the NBA. I loved him in Charlotte and I was super stoked when the Blazers traded for him last year. I wish he could have been in Portland longer than he was, but I also obviously can't fault the Blazers for making the trade that they did with him last week.

I'm not sure whats been wrong with Crash this year. For the most part, he started the season absolutely on FIRE. Him and Aldridge were absolutely lights out through the first 10 games or so, it was a big reason why the Blazers were off to such a hot start. But even in his hot start, there were some just major head scratcher games. All of them would came on the road as well. He literally went scoreless in a game where he played 30 minutes. And unfortunately, that has been a problem all year long. At the start of the season, he'd play amazing at home and be completely invisible on the road. By the middle of the season, he was just OK at home and would still disappear on the road. He bricked so many easy layups that it became a running joke.

There were a lot of theories about his down season. The shortened schedule taking a toll on his body with the style of game he plays. He apparently was playing with a broken/sprained finger on one of his hands. Some media members speculated he was struggling in the 2nd fiddle role next to Aldridge. Then where was Nate McMillan's suffocatingly stagnant offense. The chaos in the Blazers lockerroom due to the team basically quitting on McMillan. The list goes on and on. What the real reason is.... Your guys guess is as good as ours.

Honestly, a lot of what I read in your guys posts is a lot like what we saw from Wallace this season. Flat shot and not much movement without the ball. I would attribute that to one of two things....

One would be the trade. When he was first traded to Portland, he kind of played the same way. He was very tentative and didn't really know how he should play. It resulted in a lot of what you guys probably saw in his first game.

The other theory could be a Coach McMillan hangover. McMillan completely mismanaged his SF's during his time in Portland. Nate's offense was insanely stagnant. Almost completely iso sets with no cutting or slashing. His typical use of his SF's was to have them run to the corners behind the 3pt line and just stand there, waiting for someone to draw a defender to the paint and then kick it out to them for a 3pt shot. It was laughably bad.

Anyway, I honestly do hope he can get back to being himself, because he's pretty much been a shell of his former self this year and it was depressing to watch. He still will have some good games where he's the Crash of old, but it's not nearly as consistent as it used to be. I'm really hoping he gets it figured out.

This is going to be the straw that broke the camel's back.

I mean I thought he was gone anyway unless we make a top 3 jump and Billy is able to pull a miracle move off on draft night or Deron recognizes the type of player PEB or Thomas Robinson can be, then we nab a huge fish in the first couple days of free agency.

But at this point, with this loss, this is going to be the one that takes the benefit of the doubt away.

Don't land someone literally like Dwight, Love, LMA or maybe Josh Smith on draft night, or win the lotto and have Anthony Davis, he won't even wait around the first few days of free agency to see if we can extend Crash and land an Eric Gordon.

It will be 1st day of free agency and he either signs with Dallas or Portland or allows us to work a wack S&T to LAL or even NYK, which we would probably never do(Knix I mean).

You guys won't have to worry about extending Crash. It was widely believed in Portland that he's going to opt in. Reports from the media in Portland said recently that he had changed his mind about opting out because he's had such a bad season that he was going to struggle getting as much as that final year is going to pay him. This is also why people believe that the Blazers pushed so hard to make sure they traded him. They didn't want his contract on the books for this summers FA class, particularly when they want to match Batum's deal.

And just out of curiosity vc4p, why did you mention Portland as a possible landing spot for Deron in FA this summer? Whenever someone brings up Deron to Portland on sports radio, they basically get laughed off the air. No one here thinks the Blazers have a snowballs chance in hell at Williams. So I'm just curious why you thought he might land there....

[vincecarter4pres]

Well as for Wallace, I would be stunned if he doesn't opt out and reup for say 4 years somewhere between $32 and $40 million total.

As for Deron in Portland?

I don't know how much he has fallen in love with big markets and I know he has eyes for Dallas as well, but if all the talk of him wanting to win over anything else rings true, you guys will have max cap to pair him with LMA, Batum, Wes who Deron is friends with and Crawford who Deron wanted to play with and the likelihood of 2 top 10 lotto picks and IIRC some further cap as well, and then the MMLE once you hit the cap and reup Batum.

Those two lotto picks could definitely bring in some sort of stud player as well, your setup is perfect for a Deron signing, although just as we are the Nets, you guys are the Blazers(better history then us, just saying not really a marque landing spot for actual FA's) so I imagine it's a long shot.

Truth being, if we ship you say the 6xth pick and yours becomes say the 10th, you could ship just the 6xth with some filler like Babbitt, a couple throw ins of Elliot Williams and Nolan Smith and land a pretty big fish in trade, but then draft a kid at 10 to groom to be a stud starter by year 3 or 4 and be a big time bench contributor his first 2 or 3 seasons.

I mean you could technically wind up with this lineup next season:

Deron
Wes/Crawford
Batum/Wes
LMA
Gortat or Varejoa

With Lamb, Beal or Terrence Ross off the bench being groomed as a future starter.


Or say you wind up with the 8th and 10th overall picks and do some sort of S&T with both picks and Wes for Eric Gordon and then trade for a good center on bloated contract?

Deron
Gordon
Batum
LMA
Okafor or Nene

You can put together quite the lineup there if you luck out with our pick.

[DarkXaero]

Nice post DusterBuster, I appreciate it. I was a bit puzzled by Wallace's season too, so it's good to get some insight on what has possibly happened. I hope he can regain some form, because we're definitely going to need it.