Carroll quickly becoming Nets’ needed leader
For a team coming off a season in which it recorded the worst record in the NBA, leadership will be desperately needed. It shows just how desperately that when asked if an alpha had emerged in the room, the first name off Nets general manager Sean Marks’ lips wasn’t Jeremy Lin or D’Angelo Russell, but DeMarre Carroll.
That isn’t a slight on Carroll’s leadership or a recrimination of his game. But the forward was largely viewed as a salary dump in this summer’s trade with Toronto, and has never played a second in a Nets uniform.
But afte r f inishing an NBA-worst 20-62 last season, Marks brought in eight new faces this offseason. And of the lot, Carroll, 31, is already starting to take on that leadership role.
“I think that’ll sort of happen over time. For me, for an outsider looking at how these guys have their pickup games over the summer and so forth, we’ve had the new additions. It’s interesting who gravitates to whom, and so forth,” said Marks, adding that Carroll has been at the center of that gravitational pull.
“You have a guy l i ke DeMarre Carroll. When a guy like that comes in here … Kenny [Atkinson] and DeMarre are close. DeMarre’s been on 60-plus win teams three of the last four years, so he knows what he’s doing out there. And he didn’t come here to lose, so he’s going to hold these guys accountable to certain expectations and so forth, how they do things on the court.”
It’s actually 167 wins over the past three seasons — 60 with Atlanta, 56 and 51 the last two with the Raptors — but Marks’ point is well taken.
Atkinson and Carroll have a longstanding relationship from their time together with the Hawks. In two years with Atkinson as the lead assistant, Carroll averaged 11.8 points and 5.4 rebounds in 143 games — all but one of them starts. And he raised that to 14.6 in the 2014-15 playoffs, including four con- secutive 20-point games against the Nets, where coach and player find themselves reunited.
Injuries and the Raptors’ isolation offense hindered Carroll’s stay in Toronto. So with the Raptors looking to clear the two years and $30 million left on his deal, Marks extracted not just a first-round pick to take him, but circled back and got them to throw in a secondrounder and take Justin Hamilton’s $3 million contract off Brooklyn’s books.
Now that Carroll is here, whether he starts at small forward, power forward or not at all, the relationship with Atkinson should help both parties and help the rebuilding Nets.
“Kenny, because of his relationship with DeMarre, won’t be afraid to hold him accountable,’’ Marks said. “So it’s sort of that trickledown effect where Kenny can coach DeMarre hard and DeMarre expects it; and DeMarre will in turn do the same thing for his peers.”
Despite having the lowest payroll in the NBA, the Nets lost $44.3 million last year, according to ESPN, second-worst to Detroit. That doesn’t count Barclays Center profits. The Nets will make $8 million more this year via their Infor jersey sponsorship, and The Post reported they’ll get a $30 million boost in their YES Network deal.