NetsDaily Off-Season Report - No. 8
Photo by Evan Yu/NBAE via Getty Images
We’ll be updating the Nets’ off-season weekly, with bits and pieces of information, gossip, and everything in between to help fans get ready for ... anything. Does Jordi Fernandez have the winning touch? Well, that’s something fans of the Brooklyn Nets and Team Canada will find out soon enough. in the meantime, though, he’s 3-0 when he attends New York Liberty games at Barclays Center. So maybe that’s an omen or just a reflection of how dominant the Liberty are when anyone — Fernandez, Jason Sudeikas, Mikal Bridges, Billie Jean King or Ellie the Elephant — shows up. They’re that good.
Meanwhile, he and the rest of the Nets organization are getting ready for the off-season which could open as soon as next Saturday if the Boston Celtics sweep the Dallas Mavericks. Under new CBA, teams can start talking (officially) to their own free agents, in the Nets case, Nic Claxton, Lonnie Walker IV, and Dennis Smith Jr., the day after the Finals end.
On the job front, the Nets still haven’t named the team’s new assistant coach and this week a new job (actually two) opened up with word that J.R. Holden was leaving for the Pistons Holden wore two hats for the Nets, GM of the Long Island Nets and director of scouting operations.
We also don’t know what’s up with Mfon Udofia, the Long Island head coach who seemingly did a good job with Noah Clowney etc in the G League this past season. Normally, the Nets rotate G League coaches every year, often elevating the Long Island coach to the Brooklyn staff. That didn’t happen this season.
As noted previously, the job of head video coordinator is also open with Travis “Darth” Bader joining the coaching staff after four years as a video coordinator, the last two as head video coordinator.
Speaking of video coordinators, we learned this weekend — thanks RealGM — that one of the Nets coordinators this past season was Dhamir Cosby-Roundtree, one of Mikal Bridges teammates on the 2018 NCAA champion Villanova Wildcats. The 6’9” forward played sparingly but won a ring along with Bridges and Jalen Brunson,
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A post shared by Dhamir Cosby-Roundtree (@dadadelphia)
Cam Johnson’s charity turn
Cam Johnson, coiffed with a new beard, was on the court Saturday night at North Alleghany High School in Wexford, PA. for Bills safety Damar Hamlin’s charity, Chasing M’s Foundation. Johnson and Hamlin are both Pittsburgh area products and the game was the highlight of Hamlin’s charity weekend.
Hamlin, of course, went into cardiac arrest on the field in January 2023, a near death experience that gained national headlines. Johnson and Hamlin were only two of the celebrities on the court, either playing in the game or, in the case of Steelers QB Russell Wilson, shooting threes between quarters in the second half. Other Pittsburgh legends were on hand as well, including Flavor Flave, now 65, and Aaron Donald, the three-time NFL defensive player of the year.
Appropriately, Hamlin made the game-winning 3-pointer to give his blue team a 120-117 win against the red team. Hamlin took off his jersey and stood on the scorer’s table as if he just won the NBA Finals.
WOW..Damar Hamlin just hit a game-winning, ankle-breaking three at his celebrity game.. pic.twitter.com/POSRMuTm55— George Michalowski (@MichalowskiCBB) June 9, 2024
And no, we don’t have any info on what CamJ did in the game. Not that it matters considering a good time was had by all.
Draft Sleeper of the Week
We still only know the names of four prospects who have visited HSS Training Center for workouts. Only one of them — Trentyn Flowers — is even projected to be taken in either round and not by the big mock drafts. And as we keep saying, over and over again, there’s no guarantee they’ll get in or at what level. Finally, they may not even feel the need to get in. As we reported this week, only 10 of the 30 projected first round picks in ESPN mock draft are younger than Dariq Whitehead and Noah Clowney. Whitehead played only 24 minutes in two games for Brooklyn before he needed surgery. If he hadn’t gotten any minutes last season, he’d be considered a rookie next season. We expect to see both in Las Vegas at Summer League.
All that said, there are a couple of players who might fit the Sean Marks’ bill — someone who they like and could fall. So once again we give it a shot, with absolutely no evidence to support any Nets interest.
One of the youngest prospects in the Draft is yet another Frenchman, Pacome Dadiet, a 6’8” 3-and-D wing who won’t turn 19 till July. Dadiet played in Germany for Ratiopharm Ulm and is mocked somewhere between the end of the first round and beginning of the second, just where you might think the Nets would make a move. He would no doubt spend most of his season in the G League but a lot of pundits think he’s a long-term gem. NBADraft.net wrote this about him last week...
Pacome Dadiet is the prototypical 3-and-D player, but with the potential to become a lot more … A wing with great size, a solid shooter in Spot Up actions, who has shown glimpses as a secondary creator and a multi positional defender … With that said, he still has ways to go as a shooter, ball handler and defender, since he lacks consistency in all those areas … Dadiet’s ceiling is as high as anyone’s in this year’s class and if he finds a way to maximize his potential, he could become a really interesting player in the future …
Similarly, SB Nation wrote this about him Monday:
Dadiet has an intriguing combination of size and athleticism, and he put up efficient scoring numbers at a super young age this season for German league team Ulm. Not turning 19 until July, Dadiet shot 35.8 percent from three and finished with 61.9 percent true shooting. He’s mostly an off-ball player right now who will try to make an impact on cuts and spot-ups while also hitting the glass. He’s an enticing long-term bet at this point in the draft.
Both mocks have him at No. 27.
He didn’t put up big numbers but at 18 he was playing in a top European national team and the eye-test shows a player who like NBADraft.net reported has a mature game for his age...
Olympic update
Men’s and women’s national teams are announcing rosters and at the moment, it looks like seven players on the Nets and Liberty — plus the two teams’ head coaches — will be in Paris next month. For the Nets, only Dennis Schroder has a guaranteed spot as the captain of the German national team. He will be joined by two Liberty players, Germany’s Nyara Sabally and Leonie Fiebich, as they float down the Seine on July 26, each national team on boats.
Breanna Stewart and Sabrina Ionescu will represent Team USA and two Liberty players who have taken the summer off to prepare for the Olympics, Marine Johannes and Han Xu will represent France and China.
In addition to Nets head coach Jordi Fernandez (Canada) and Sandy Brondello (Australia) Adam Caporn, Nets assistant, will help out Australian head coach Brian Goorjian.
Finally, two of the Nets six stashes will play for Serbia which will be led by Nikola Jokic. Seven footer Nikola Milutinov and wing Vanja Marinkovic, were named to the team on Monday. Don’t expect to see either in Brooklyn.
Final Note
We’ve done our Kyrie Irving story this week, an essay reminding people of why he isn’t with the team any more and suggesting the feel-good stories about his “redemption” needed some context. Since then, there have been two stories related to his exit: a Stefan Bondy interview with Markieff Morris in the Post and a Sam Amick interview with Adam Silver in The Athletic, the latter behind a paywall.
Without getting into too much detail — Irving has been gone from the Nets for 18 months, here’s the basics. Morris claimed that Irving wanted out because the Nets “didn’t want to pay him,” which has some validity but as with all things Kyrie, it’s not quite there.
Specifically, Morris told Bondy.
“It was time for his contract extension, the two sides didn’t meet up, business got involved, and that’s what happened. That’s how it goes. I think Kyrie was averaging about 27 [points] at the time. I think we won 18 out of 20 and all of a sudden the business got involved. That’s how it goes sometimes. A guy of Kyrie’s stature, I wouldn’t be standing for that either. Get me up out of there.”
As Bondy notes, the Nets did make Irving an offer, despite the controversies that we detailed in the essay.
The Nets, as The Post’s Brian Lewis reported, offered Irving a short-term and incentive-laden extension because of his unreliability.
It followed a slew of controversies and missed games from Irving, most notably involving his refusal to inject the COVID-19 vaccine and promotion of an anti-Semitic film on Twitter.
Indeed, the final offer was essentially, as one Nets insider put it, a series of one-year deals in which Irving would have to prove himself over and over. The rationale behind the offer was not just the controversies, but Irving’s lack of availability. Over the course of the four years of his contract, he missed close to 150 games. It wasn’t just that he, Kevin Durant and James Harden played only 16 games together. He and Durant played only 74 before they were traded within days of each other in February 2023.
Moreover what Morris did not mention is that Irving had a $242 million extension on the table in the summer of 2021 that he could have signed but unlike Kevin Durant decided not to. Then, his refusal to take the COVID shot that fall understandably froze negotiations. KD had already signed his extension — $198 million — and the Nets believed he and James Harden, who had been offered a $268 million extension, would do the same. Recall that Sean Marks noted at his August 2021 presser that he expected all three would be “signed, sealed and delivered,” a very un-Marksian comment, by the beginning of the next season.
As for the Silver comments, the key point was that Irving was “remorseful” about his role in the controversial Hebrews to Negroes documentary.
“Absolutely,” Silver said. “I think in our private conversations, which at the time included (former NBPA executive director) Tamika Tremaglio … he was very remorseful. He took responsibility. I think we all know he can be a bit stubborn, and I think he felt strongly that he needed to speak in his own words in terms of how he expressed himself in terms of an apology to the public.
“But there was no doubt for me — and I wouldn’t have said what I did at the time if I didn’t feel that he was absolutely remorseful and was committed to doing the right thing going forward, and also to being empathetic to how others might have perceived his comments.”
Of course, Irving was slow to make that apology and he was suspended by the Nets for his initial refusal. Moreover, he later deleted it.
Enough said.
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