Right now reporters are saying that DJ Augustin to Nets is not a deal breaker.  However, unless Nets get back a decent PG (with hope that Farmar and TWill will come through this year), Nets will have a hole at PG.

Deal should be threatened to be withdrawn.  Charlotte is getting a great deal and they will likely back down.

Nets could find another option to trade Harris and get a PG back.  

Please send a message to Billy King that we won't support deal without a PG returning.

(Please replace "with" with "without" in Poll question).

Poll

Should King threaten to withdraw Harris to Charlotte with Augustine coming to Nets?

81%

A. Yes

114 votes

18%

B. No

26 votes

140 votes | Poll has closed

Turkey came from behind to win game with less than 1 second left as a lane opened for a drive to the basket.  Krstic had fouled out moments before.

Tomorrow's game could have the most one sided crowd ever, in a championship game, with the USA as the road team.

Everything said about Kevin Durant will only come true if the USA can prevent the crowd from distracting the team.

Both Odom and Coach K. said they knew people who lost their life on 9/11/01.  Maybe K will choose to use that as motivation to win on 9/12?

If the USA wins, they wouldn't have to qualify in 2011, which would make LeBron and company very happy.

Also, in 2012, it appears that the UK will get an automatic bid, even though they don't have recent basketball experience.  However, there will be several well known NBA players, in the lineup for the UK.

This post is prompted by the pessimism which supports NI's view of how Nets fans view things differently from Knicks fans (who are overly optimistic without any evidence from the past 10 years).

Nets of course won 12 games last year, but they also had major injury problems, especially early in the season.  They also had the worst coaching in the NBA for most of the season.

Now if the Nets instead had an average number of injuries (even the 1st game and thus the 1st losing streak can be attributed to an injury to Hayes) and if they instead had the best coach for them (Avery Johnson), I think it would be fair to give the Nets an extra 10 victories for last season.

I will use 12+10 = 22 victories as the base from last year's lineup (assuming average injuries and Avery as coach).

Now let's see how the players from this season compare with last year, to see if they can add to the 22 wins.

The 14 core players from last year were:

Lopez, Harris, TWill, Yi, CLee, CDR, Simmons, Hassell, Hayes, Dooling, Battie, Najera, Alston and Boone.

(You get the picture already, when looking at that sad core of a team.)

This year's core of 13 players (if SMay is healthy) should be:

Lopez, Harris, TWill, Outlaw, Murphy, Morrow, Favors, Hump, DJames, Petro, Farmar, Ross and May.

In every position, essentially player for player, the Nets should be better this year.

1. Lopez will have better coaching, a year of experience and a far better team so he isn't  always double teamed.

2. Harris should have the biggest improvement from last year as he basically took the year off due to lack of coaching, lack of team support and knowing that Management didn't mind if Nets were bad enough to get the #1 draft pick.

3. TWill will no longer be a rookie and will be given goals by Avery.  If TWill shows promise, he should become Avery's #1 personal student, just as Harris once was.  Still, how TWill does at SG is perhaps the biggest uncertainty.

4. Murphy will blow away Yi's performance from last year, including on defense (Murphy's weakness).  If Murphy was responsible for 13.7 wins last season, for Indiana (Dwyer article), imagine what he would do for the Nets! 

5-7. Next compare Boone, Najera and Simmons with Favors, Hump (overlap) and May at PF.  Overall, it is such a blowout at PF. 

I would conservatively add 14 victories from upgrades at the PF position.

8-9. Outlaw + DJames blow away Hayes + Hassell from last season.  At least 4 more victories.  We are up to 40 wins already.

10. Farmar should beat out Alston and equal Dooling at the backup PG. 

11-12  SG is the tricky position.  CLee was pretty bad on offense for more that 1/2 of last year, so I would give the edge to Morrow+Ross.  TWill will compete for the balance of minutes and may have an advantage of Dooling from last season. 

Overall, I would give the several extra wins at the Guard position, due mostly to Harris' expected improvement now that he has a real team to surround himself and motivation to win.  We are up to about 43 wins conservatively.

13. Petro is clearly better than Battie and Murphy can also play backup Center (besides Favors).  Nets should have a presence at Center for most of 48 minutes/game this year.  They lost many games last year where there was little production at Center in the 2nd half, especially the last 6 minutes. 

Nets should have another 4 wins due to improvement at the Center position, for a total of 47 victories.

Of course injuries could reduce that total, but pleasant surprises (DJames, TWill) could counter.

I don't think it would be easy to find an example where one team pretty much improved from positions 1-13 as the Nets have compared with last season.  You certainly don't end up with less than 37 wins with that kind of improvement.

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I am not sure what the cap hold $ is, but I think it is about $484 since CDR's departure saved the Nets only $370,000 ($854,000-484,000=$370,000). 

With 8 Nets now and 2 anticipated FAs, that leaves 2 cap holds (since cap holds disappear once free agents sign).

Using the best figure for the Cap at 56.1 million (will be out July 1), I get:

56.1 - (22.21 (salaries of 6 Nets under contract including Hump #) + 4.41 (#3+#24 picks *) + 0.5 (buyout Dooling) + .968 (for 2 cap holds) = (56.1 – 28.09 = $28.01 million cap space.)

.# http://hoopshype.com/salaries/new_jersey.htm

.* http://hoopshype.com/draft.htm

The media has been using the figure 27.2 million, not the above figure of 28.0 million.   I assumed bonuses were delayed and there is no need to count cap holds for 2 players that will be signed in free agency.

 If 28.01 million is correct, then adding 4.05 million for Yi and subtract 0.484 cap hold leaves 31.58 million.   That is enough for a MAX 16.67 (LeBron) with 14.9 million for Boozer.  I’m sure Boozer would accept if it meant playing with LeBron for a Championship.

Now if LeBron insisted on Bosh, and Bosh was agreeable, then it seems like it would be to everyone’s interest to do a S & T after July 8 with Toronto and include Hump.  That would effectively add another 3.2 million in cap (if his contract wasn’t already renegotiated).   Likewise, Utah would probably take Hump back in a S&T, as Millsap’s backup, but that might not be necessary.

In conclusion, can we please focus on trading YI and get the whole sports world fearful of Nets?  Its not necessary to worry about Hump so much now.

Can some one else do the same analysis for Miami and Chicago?

Miami has a base salary of 22.96 (includes DWade) but they have lots of cap holds and didn’t take any first rounder in draft.

http://hoopshype.com/salaries/miami.htm

Chicago has a base salary of 22.86 after trading Hinrich and they took one 1st rounder.

http://hoopshype.com/salaries/chicago.htm

 

The draft and free agency are connected.  Its about time that everyone making their draft pick would make their free agency choice at the same time.  That is another reason I don't like Favors.  It messes up free agency, besides the fact that LeBron wants a team ready to win, and not a project.

My Plan A is to trade for #2 pick and take Evan Turner.  That would leave the most flexibility for free agency.

My Plan B is to hope that DeMarcus Cousins proves he can be disciplined and becomes the Nets PF/C along side of Lopez.  Then on July 1 make a move for RGay with a front ended, but reasonable offer that would scare Memphis.  If he stays in shape (270 lbs) and keeps out of trouble, Cousins could have the same impact as Hall of Famer Charles Barkley.

Plan C

However, if Cousins doesn't look good by June 24, I would take Aminu, who is only 10 months older than Favors but having 2 years college experience and ready to start. Actually I would wait until Minny approached Nets to buy their #3 pick.  I would demand the Minny #16 pick.  They might refuse, but Minny also has the #23 pick. I would give them the #31 pick in return.  

Aminu is 3 years younger than Wes Johnson, with upside beyond that of Lamar Odom.  He would play mostly SF and would be the best rebounding SF in Nets history, making Thorn very happy.  Nets could then get a PF like DLee come July 1, thereby messing up Knicks plans at the same time.  Proky alluded to stealing away Knicks fans.

I will post some video and stats on Aminu below, since I couldn't get the Link to work for me. 

I'm sure Aminu has weaknesses, but Avery will be a good coach.  Actually he looks better than Favors in these videos and I wouldn't be surprised if he drops on the draft boards.  NI said Nets like Aminu, so this could be an Insider secret.

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<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:PunctuationKerning /> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas /> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables /> <w:SnapToGridInCell /> <w:WrapTextWithPunct /> <w:UseAsianBreakRules /> <w:DontGrowAutofit /> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--> &amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;!-- /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; This all fits in with Proky's plan to go after LeBron as Nets would have 2 All Star level pieces added to team before LeBron would have to make a decision.  Certainly a better situation than Chicago.

Regardless of which Plan Rod Thorn follows, he has to remember to keep the other teams in the dark as to his favorite.  They must believe that it is between Cousins and Favors.  Phila shouldn't know he desperately wants Turner and Minny shouldn't know that he really likes Amino over Favors or Cousins.