Chris Douglas-Roberts slapped on the Nets, by his own admission, the worst label an NBA player can receive: soft.
After the Nets plopped into the history books Wednesday with a worst-ever 0-18 start, Douglas-Roberts questioned the team’s heart, guts, small intestines. He said opponents looked at the Nets as soft and with good reason. They are.
Yesterday, there was no disagreement with the charge but there was universal agreement that attitudes and approaches must change.
“He’s not speaking anything that’s not true. It’s not like he’s off the wall,” Devin Harris said. “It’d be different if he called one particular person out, but it was the team as a whole. And on some points, he is right.”
Douglas-Roberts said opponents view the Nets as a cupcake. Hit them once and they fold. But sometimes, players don’t want to hear any of that. And Douglas-Roberts said a coaching change is no cure-all.
“It doesn’t create a problem. He was just letting out his frustration,” said Trenton Hassell, who goes back to the bench tonight as Kiki Vandeweghe coaches his first game. “My motto is, ‘If it offends you, then he must be talking about you.’ I know what I’ve got and what I can do. So if it offends you, you’ve got to go to a mirror and say, ‘Is he talking about me?’ Once you get that label on you, no matter who you are, it’s hard to survive in this league.”
Now Douglas-Roberts, who has seethed and simmered all season throughout the losing, waits to see if anyone heeds his words.
“All I can do is hope,” he said. “You can’t really say too much about the future or how guys are going to play.”