Brook Lopez, in all likelihood the Nets' best player, returned from an injury absence for Brooklyn on Friday as the team visited the Houston Rockets. Deron Williams, Andrei Kirilenko and Jason Terry remain out with injuries, and Kevin Garnett had a scheduled rest day. But you figured that with Lopez back, Jeremy Lin out for Houston and James Harden gimpy with an injury of his own, the Nets would compete.
Brook Lopez returns, but things get even worse for Jason Kidd and the Nets
Four of Brooklyn’s starters got benched at halftime due to a 66-40 deficit in Houston. Welp.
Scott Halleran
They trailed 66-40 at halftime.
So Jason Kidd, the rookie coach who is trying every trick in the book, went with an old standard: he benched the starting lineup at halftime. Well, except for Lopez. Joe Johnson seemed less than pleased. From the New York Post's Mike Vaccaro:
it was Kidd’s turn to deliver a stinging memorandum of his own. It will take a bit to know if the impact were real, but Johnson, for one, looked plenty angry, all but spitting out: “He’s the coach. I’m the player,” when asked his thoughts on the lineup switch.
J.J. is the second player offering a hint of displeasure with Kidd's tactics. Paul Pierce appeared to take a shot at Kidd earlier in the week, commenting on the Nets' lack of halftime adjustments. That's the problem with the pop drop Kidd executed on Wednesday, and Friday's bench-the-starters gambit: it's all tricks, tactics. There appears to be so little in the way of potential solutions for Brooklyn's woes.
The impact of coaching is largely a mystery, but Kidd is not making a great case for hiring rookies with no previous bench experience. Even if this mess isn’t all his fault, it’s clear that he’s absolutely flailing.
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