With the Nets off to a 5-13 start in the East, there is a lot of finger pointing going on. Losing does that.
That includes fingers at first-year coach Jason Kidd, who recently demoted lead assistant Lawrence Frank to be basically the highest paid video coordinator in the NBA. The Nets offense has been isolation heavy, and their defense is the worst in the NBA right now (using points allowed per possession). The Nets have battled injuries but good teams still find ways to win through that, the Nets have not come close.
However, former NBA coach Stan Van Gundy said this isn’t on Kidd — he was put in an impossible situation. Van Gundy was on the Armani and Eyton show on NBC Sports Radio (featuring former New York Giants wide receiver Amani Toomer and Eytan Shander who you know from the PBT Podcasts) and said this:
“I don’t think this is on Jason Kidd. Some people have really taken a lot of what I said about him as being critical of him but it’s not. I think if you look at Mark Jackson or Doc Rivers when he started, guys who have not been assistant coaches before they got their NBA head jobs, what they had was situatons where at least in their first year the expectatipons weren’t that high. So you had the freedom to make some mistakes, sorta out of the scruitiny, at least the national scrutiny, of everybody.
“Jason Kidd entered a job with very high expectations, for a guy who never coached I think that’s really, really difficult. He may grow into a very, very fine coach — but no one is a great coach when they first start. I’m sure Doc Rivers would tell you in all honesty that he is a far better coach now than he was when he first started. Not to say he wasn’t good when he started but you get a lot better over time. Jason Kidd was expected to be great.”
He’s right that management put together this roster and let Kidd talk them into coaching it (Kidd lobbied heavily for this job). They took the risk.
We really don’t know how good a coach Kidd will be, even this season — how will the Nets look when Deron Williams, Brook Lopez, Paul Pierce and Andrei Kirilenko are all healthy and part of the rotation? The Nets were without Williams through training camp, which was a setback in building chemistry because D-Will has to control the offense (and play like an All-Star) for this team to win. In his absense, their offense had everyone getting touches and it quickly devolved into isolation sets that were easier to defend.
The other problem in Brooklyn is with the age and contracts of Pierce, Kevin Garnett, Jason Terry and others the championship window is one, maybe two years. Kidd doesn’t have the luxury of time to learn on the job, let alone learn on a team plagued with injuries.
But is that Kidd’s fault?