The hopes were high for the Brooklyn Nets when they added Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, Jason Terry and Andrei Kirilenko to their squad that included Deron Williams, Joe Johnson and Brook Lopez. Things however haven’t gone as planned with Lopez fracturing his foot and being ruled out for the rest of the season, Deron has battled ankle injuries, Pierce a hand fracture, Kirilenko doesn’t have a timetable to return from his injuries and the rest of the team hasn’t been playing well either. That’s quite a lot to deal with for a first year head coach and it might just be a wrap for Jason Kidd.
via Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports.
Here’s the question management is grappling with: Does Brooklyn start unloading its star players and stay the course with the coach, or unload the coach and let someone else coach these star players?
The loss of center Brook Lopez doesn’t deliver Kidd the guarantee of surviving his first season as coach. Whatever the dismal Atlantic Division standings say about the Nets trailing first place by only three games, Kidd won’t reach the All-Star break without restoring order to his team.
The report says that as things have gotten worse Kidd has isolated himself in the organization, away from management and the players. That’s not good.
Struggling teams need a lot of structure and very defined roles for players, which helps them turn things around and start to gain confidence. That isn’t happening in Brooklyn, Wojnarowski reports.
More than once, sources said, players have stood in the locker room and told Kidd they don’t understand their roles, that there’s confusion about their principles. When the Nets players keep insisting they don’t have a team identity, they’re offering code words for Kidd’s inability to give them clear structure, organization and vision.
As I said before, owner Mikhail Prokhorov is spending almost $190 million for this team and he wants results now. With this current squad they have about a 1-2 year window and clearly Jason Kidd isn’t the person to get them to where they need to be.
