Bottom-dwelling Nets take their cues from the top

[December 04, 2009]  OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) -- Everyone insists the New Jersey Nets can't get much worse.

In that case, we'll take the under.

Team president Rod Thorn blames "a perfect storm" for his team's record-setting 0-18 start to the NBA season, but that's just the short-term forecast. Actually, it's the lack of interest and effort from owner Bruce Ratner that's swamping the franchise, steadily drip-drip-dripping down the organizational chart like a five-years-long-and-counting version of water torture.

"We kind of give up and just lay down," guard Chris Douglas-Roberts said, inadvertently providing an appropriate inscription for the Nets' tombstone when this season is mercifully put to rest.

For the record, Thorn is right about this much: A few more favorable bounces of the ball, or even a few less injuries, and the Nets might not have made history.

All that would have done, though, is delay the inevitable.

The Nets lost to Minnesota by just two points on opening night, to the 76ers by three points twice in a five-day stretch, and three days later at Miami on a last-second shot. Then again, those were the only games in which they've been competitive. It's also true that New Jersey dressed only eight healthy players for most of the streak, losing the equivalent of almost 90 games due to a variety of injured players, most notably All-Star guard Devin Harris.

And, yes, the Nets have a very good chance to get off the schneid in the coming days, just in time to avoid tying the single-season record of 23 straight losses, held by the 1997-98 Denver Nuggets and the 1995-96 Vancouver Grizzlies.

The schedule feeds them five straight sub-.500 teams, beginning with the Charlotte Bobcats at home Friday night. Lose that one and they head to Madison Square Garden next, to face a lousy Knicks team in what might be the closest thing to a playoff atmosphere the New York metropolitan area experiences -- at least until the Yankees begin defense of their World Series title in earnest next fall.

The Nets' promising young players might even get a lift now that general manager Kiki Vandeweghe has moved down from the executive seats to the end of the bench, since he's shown some skill developing players during previous stops in Dallas and Denver. Just don't bet the surge will be big enough to make much of a difference.

"There aren't new players coming in, we're the same team," Douglas-Roberts said. "It really doesn't matter who coaches us."

It's hard to argue with that logic, especially since Ratner and his almost-certain successor, Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, have standing orders barring any new spending. The team is losing an estimated $30 million to $40 million a year, and the Nets arena is barely half-filled most nights, largely owing to Ratner's half-baked plan to move the franchise to a new stadium he planned to build in Brooklyn. Why NBA commissioner David Stern went along with the scheme is anyone's guess, but it has already cost his league plenty in credibility.

Meantime, you could have built a pretty good team with the players and payroll Ratner shed, and the message it sent has infected the team New Jersey does put out on the floor most nights. The 117-101 loss Wednesday night to the Mavericks that put the Nets in the record book was historic all right; if New Jersey's players are anywhere near as uninterested as they looked in that one, the single-season 9-73 mark for futility, set by the 1972-73 Philadelphia 76ers, is easily within reach.

You can see better defense in some layup lines than New Jersey applied in the second quarter. Dallas made 17 of 19 shots, scored on 22 of 24 possessions and turned a tie score at the end of the first quarter into a 27-point halftime lead.

Yahoo! sports astutely pointed out that the best defense displayed by anybody wearing a New Jersey uniform all night was when security guards threatened to eject a father and son for holding up a sign that said, "End Ratner's Reign of Error."

The one good move the club has made in recent days was firing coach Lawrence Frank on Sunday. That spared him from going into the record books alongside the record-tying and record-setting losses, the reasoning being, perhaps, that he had suffered enough. But all that accomplished was kicking the can down the road.

"What happens is it wears on you," interim coach Tom Barrise said, preparing to hand over the reins to Vandeweghe. "It's every day, or every other day."

Associated Press; By JIM LITKE]

Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at [e-mail].  

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