It ended as so many Net seasons have: with lots of losing and frustration. And with a coaching change on the horizon.
“I don’t want them to settle it soon. I want them to make a wise decision,” said Stephon Marbury of the replacement for Don Casey, whose official firing will come after the weekend, likely Monday.
Yesterday was the day the Nets said their good-byes, to each other and to a season that will go down as one of the most disappointing for a franchise that has made disappointment a constant companion. Casey, who gave one last pitch for his job which will fall on deaf ears, will be gone as will, sources insist, general manager John Nash. Team president Michael Rowe likely will be reassigned to a position he is likely to decline.
And so the Nets, who finished the season with 11 straight defeats and just seven healthy bodies, packed up their bags and received a final “feel good about yourselves” pep talk and were dismissed. All were present except Jayson Williams, who didn’t play a single game because of injuries and who remains Casey’s strongest supporter. When the team returns intact, the makeup is almost certain to be different; the staff will be completely realigned.
“The difficulty is they don’t put ‘L-E: Loss with great Effort.’ The effort had to be a win,” said Casey, whose team, despite all the effort managed a dismal 31-51 record with a staggeringly poor 10-24 mark in games decided by five points or less.
“Being pragmatic, you know what the emphasis will be on,” Casey said. “In this league, you could literally have a bus crash and every player have a broken leg and bring a CBA team in and lose and they’ll say, ‘You didn’t win.’ That’s the perspective. It’s hard. I’m not going to sit down and debate.”
And so Casey, who claims “the only thing I ever plan is a pension,” will get the official word from principal owner Lewis Katz and will become yet another ex-Net coach. That’s what happens when, regardless of effort, your team starts 2-15 and ends 0-11. In hindsight, Casey said, perhaps he put too much stock in the 13-17 finish to the lockout season.
After John Calipari was fired, the team finished with a flurry. But there was no pressure and the team was going nowhere. This season, the Nets tried to start how they finished, but it didn’t work. Oops.
“[With] the way we finished, we may have been a little bit – or I may have been a little bit – duped in feeling that we could continue that way,” Casey acknowledged.
And so they stumbled through a season where, yes, they had a large share of bad breaks, but an even larger share of bad losses.
“It’s almost like we were cursed this year,” Keith Van Horn said. “The day before Jayson is supposed to come back, he breaks his foot. We lose 24 games by less than five points. When Evan [Eschmeyer] finally starts playing great, he gets injured. It’s unbelievable. I can’t imagine I’ll ever have to go through anything like this again.”
Obviously, the young man has not been around the Nets long enough. At .378, this was their second most successful season since 1994, their fourth best since 1986. Just keep telling yourself, “It’s the Nets, it’s the Nets …” And now Casey goes the way of so many before him.
“It’s plain in this business. It’s cut and dried and right to the point,” Marbury said. “You don’t win, these are the questions you have to ask. It all falls back on the coach. Some people may think it’s fair, some people may not, but that’s just how it is.
“No one knows what’s going on right now. We’re all assuming he’s going to get fired, based on how things were going,” Marbury offered. “I’m not thinking about that. It’s a long time before we start playing again.”