Reading through Hupu.com, the big Chinese sports blog’s Nets Zone, we noted a couple of fans lamenting the daily “humiliation“ they face as various pundits and other assorted savants have made their rankings of the Draft/Free Agency as well as predictions about the coming regular season … none of whose win totals start with a 3 or higher.
For fans in Beijing or Bensonhurst, Shanghai or Sunset Park, the negativity — whether warranted or not — is overwhelming the positive. And after all, none of that assorted predictive matter will matter until next season begins.
So we were a bit surprised when on Thursday night news broke that the Nets players had gathered at the ultra-trendy Giorgio Baldi in Santa Monica, an L.A. suburb. Paparzzi regularly wait outside legendary restaurant hopping to grab celebrity snaps they can sell.
And Thursday night, they were rewarded when a bus parked outside and what we counted as Nets players hopped off the bus to photographer’s flashes.
The Hollywood Curtain had the most video on their YouTube account.
Now, we still don’t know what the team or at the very least 10 of them were doing on the other side of the country gathering for a dinner. Best bet is that Nets are having some sort of off-site, a bonding event in southern California.
Back in the summer of 2017, D’Angelo Russell led a group of young teammates on a similar bonding experience to L.A. and vicinity. Then, in two separate preseasons, the team spent some time in San Diego where Joe and Clara Tsai have long owned an estate. But those were preseasons with all the accompanying media. This time, no media, no warning. We assume the dinner was an opening to the trip rather than a closing since a number of the players had been seen elsewhere earlier in the week. As his vlog from earlier in the week showed, Michael Porter J. was already out there running the dunes and getting off shots with Trae Young.
It’s all well and good we can find video of this and confirm the players location but as those fans on Hupu.com note, the Nets could use the trip as a tonic for fans and may still do with one of their social media features, but we don’t know that. Can’t see any hard in letting it be known what the team is doing, how they are being serious despite the woe-is-me that even fans in China feel … the “humiliation.”
The Nets as a culture are all about keeping everything in-house. The SCOUT docu-series and follow-up stories are a positive in this regard. Unauthorized leaks are discouraged in the extreme, but a couple of authorized leaks — at the least — would be helpful. The default position should be transparency.
Next moves?
Nothing new since the Heat salary dump that brought Haywood Highsmith and an unprotected Miami Heat second for a paper second round pick next year. Unless the Nets finish with the fifth best record next season — that’s not happening — they will keep their own second. .
However, there has been speculation that the Nets MIGHT be interested in one of two Maliks, Malik Monk of the Kings or Malik Beasley of the Heat. Neither seems likely for a lot of reasons, including roster construction and in Beasley’s case his recent history. Although he was said to be no longer a target in the Brooklyn federal prosecutor’s probe of illegal gambling in the league his status beyond that remains unclear. Does the league have its own investigation? As for Monk, he is under contract for the next three seasons at around $50 million, the final $21 million a player option in 2027-28. That doesn’t see anywhere close to the Nets timeline.
One possibility that actually has been discussed at some level, we’ve been told, is a salary dump of Anfernee Simons who’s on a $27.7 million expiring deal the Celtics would like to be rid of as they try to get under the apron. With a little effort, the Nets could come up with enough salary cap room to get him resituated, but Brooklyn reportedly wants more than what the Celtics have been willing to offer and whatever talks they’re were ended. Moreover, the Celtics have already moved closer to their goal when they re-routed Georges Niang from Atlanta through Boston and on to Utah. However, they are still over the luxury tax threshold. Some have suggested that the Celtics will wait to the trade deadline.
The value of Simons — like Terance Mann, Michael Porter Jr., and Haywood Highsmith — is that they produce a secondary benefit beyond the draft picks: players who are under 28 with solid reputations that could yield more assets going forward.
Warner Brothers plans horror movie about the New Jersey Nets
Get ready: another humiliation unrelated to the current season. Warner Brothers is greenlighting a film, “With the Eighth Pick. about one of the worst if not the worse move in franchise history ” No word on any director or actors. Hopefully, the services of an exorcist will be retained just to be on the safe side.
It’s the well-told tale of how the New Jersey Nets, then owned by Ray Chambers and Lewis Katz, and run by John Calipari, executive V.P. of basketball operations and head coach, and John Nash, general manager — get all the names for the indictment — passed on Kobe Bryant even though as Bobby Marks has said Bryant had the single best workout of any draft prospect ever at the team’s practice facility and the Nets held the seventh pick in a loaded 1996 Draft.
Instead, the Nets took Kerry Kittles of Villanova at No. 7, leaving Bryant, who had just graduated from a nearby Philly area high school to wait till No. 13 when Jerry West, then Lakers GM, worked his often employed magic and got the Hornets to trade his right to L.A. for Vlade Divac.
As has been written, Kobe’s father threatened to send his son to play Italy where he had grown up while Dad played pro ball there while waiting for Cal and Nash to make a deal with another team. But was it an empty threat?
Our Anthony Puccio later asked Kobe and he admitted that yes, the threat was pretty much empty and he would have joined the Nets training camp.
Empires fall and rise on less.
The Nets were in a bind which no doubt will be the central tension of the movie. They believed they knew how good the 17-year-old could be (he was way, way better, of course) but at the same time this was to be the first pick of the Cal era and if Bryant carried out his threat, it would look bad for the new boss and by extension the organization. Same ol’ Nets they would have said if it all went wrong. So Cal ultimately chose discretion over valor and selected Kittles, a perfectly good choice at No.7 who would be a huge part of the two NBA Finalists. But Kobe turned out to be, well, Kobe. As his Wikipedia entry showed, he was something quite, quite different.
A five-time NBA champion, the 2008 NBA Most Valuable Player, 18-time All-Star, four-time All-Star MVP, 15-time member of the All-NBA Team, 12-time member of the All-Defensive Team, , two-time NBA Finals MVP, and two-time scoring champion.
If you’re looking for names to contact to offer your services as an extra or Coach Cal, here’ the basic info on who’s in charge, from Deadline who broke the story.
MPJ firing off vlogs from coast to coast
It’s hard to keep track of Michael Porter Jr. vlogs. After his heavily criticized appearance on “A Night with Steiny,” released eight new vlogs in seven days. The complete list can be found on the “Curious Mike” YouTube Channel.
There have been nuggets (pardon the weak pun) of news in there. In his most recent, MPJ worked out with Trae Young, Torrey Craig and shoewear designer Mat Nahmias.
Not a lot of news, but Porter noted that while Trae Young is “trying to get back to the All-Star Game,” he hopes to “make my first one.”
Porter also revealed how well he knows Young, who can opt out of his Hawks contract next summer.
For his part, Young agreed with the Nets executive who told Keith Smith of Spotrac that he thought Porter could challenge for the league scoring title. He told Porter that he could average at least 25 … 25 easily.“
Separately on Johnny Manziel’s “Glory Daze” podcast, also this week, MPJ explained why his numbers are likely to go up from last year’s 18.0 points on 50/40/80 shooting splits.
“When you have a championship-level team, there’s gonna be a lot of good players on that team, and there’s going to be some sacrificing going on. So when Aaron Gordon came over from Orlando to Denver, he was a number one option in Orlando, and he was probably the number four option in Denver,” Porter said. “And so I think we just had so many players that we all had to find that niche and that role to make our team as good as possible…
“There’s not a Nikola Jokic on our team that’s going to have the ball every time down the floor, making the decisions. So I’m going to have the ball in my hands a little bit more, have to make more plays, have to take tougher shots,” Porter continued. “It was a blessing to play with Nikola, a blessing to play with Jamal, AG and all those guys. But it’s going to be fun exploring my game a little bit as one of the go-to guys.”
Porter also said that he’s been spending time around the Flatbush 5 and likes what he sees in terms of their excitement about the season.
Final Note
The Nets’ NBA China games are still six weeks away but last week we got a hint at how China, particularly Macao, will welcome the Nets and Suns on October 10 and 12 when we saw how Chungking welcomed Step Curry on his tour of the world’s largest city at 33 million:
Now imagine the welcome the nation will give the NBA after its five year hiatus following the 2019 controversy over then Rocket GM unleashed with his his tweet of support for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy supporters.
It should be wild.
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