As Nets beat Philly, King works phones
NETS GENERAL manager Billy King said he has no plans to dismantle the Nets but acknowledged he’d be willing to break up his disappointing Big 3 for the right offer.
“My job is to talk on the phone,” King said Friday, reacting to a report that Deron Williams, Joe Johnson and Brook Lopez — the highest-paid trio in the league — were on the trading block. “People call us and make offers (and) you say ‘No.’ And so when you do that and it gets out, someone says that ‘Well, they’re shopping guys.’ That’s my job. My job is to listen to people that make calls and to make calls back. Does that mean that we’re having a fire sale? Absolutely not.”
King did take some shots at his stars — saying they were underperforming — before the Nets ended a three-game skid with an 88-70 win over the tanking Sixers Friday night at Barclays Center. “If I knew (why they haven’t played well) they’d be doing it,” King said. “Because I would tell them to do what they’re not doing. I don’t know.”
The win over the Sixers didn’t provide many answers, with Williams missing all eight of his shots and finishing with three points.
Johnson returned after missing two games with the flu and had 12 points, while Lopez remained sidelined with a strained lower back. The Nets (9-12) trailed the Sixers (2-20) by a point at the half and led just 63-60 heading into the fourth before coming alive in the final frame, scoring 10 straight to extend the lead 73-60 with around seven minutes left, the most spectacular play coming on an alley-oop pass for a dunk from Jarrett Jack to Cory Jefferson.
Mason Plumlee, who privately spoke to coach Lionel Hollins on Thursday about his role, scored a season-high 18 points and added 10 rebounds as Brooklyn finally was able to put away the team that is more interested in obtaining a high draft pick than in winning games. The Sixers totaled just 11 two-point field goals, the lowest number in an NBA game in the shot-clock era, dating back to 1963. The Nets might be bad, but they’re not that bad.
Asked directly to confirm reports that Lopez, Williams and Johnson were on the trading block, King demurred: “I didn’t say they were (on the trading block),” King said. “Some of you media people said it.”
But he also admitted that he’s working the phones, trying to improve the team, whatever shape that might take, although no deals were imminent. King said he addressed Nets players about the trade reports, and they didn’t seem to view them as a distraction. “They’re veterans,” King said. “Brook’s name has been mentioned (in trades) for like six, seven years. But I’ve talked to the guys and they understand that it’s a business — not the good part of the business, but it’s part of it.”
King admitted that he’s disappointed with how the team has played, but there is still plenty of season left to make adjustments.
“Fortunately we’re in the East,” he said, referencing the moribund conference, where the Nets are in eighth place, good enough to make the playoffs if they started on Friday. The team was 10-21 last season before it turned things around.
“We haven’t (played) like we expected to play,” King admitted. “But I don’t think it’s over. I think last year at this time we were having the same conversation and we turned it around. But I don’t want to wait until we get to that point. We have to start playing better as a group.”
He then added: “Some guys just haven’t played up to the level that they needed to play.”
King said Brooklyn is going “in a different direction” in terms of building the team through pricey, flashy veterans, as had been standard operating procedure in recent years.
“With ownership, we talk, we mapped it out, we looked at it and made a decision this year to go in a different direction,” King said.
The Nets finalized a deal on Thursday that sent forward Andrei Kirilenko, guard Jorge Gutierrez and a 2020 second-round draft pick to the Sixers for 6-10 forward Brandon Davies (Philly also has the right to swap second-rounders with the Nets in 2018). The move allowed the Nets to create a $3.4 million trade exception and a $916,000 trade exception.
“For a couple years we’ve been 15-man rosters with full guarantees,” King said. “So now it does allow us to have some flexibility.”
GRADUATION DAY: Jack will walk with his graduating class Saturday morning at Georgia Tech before flying to Charlotte to be with his teammates for a game later that day. Jack got his degree in business management.