Here’s one vote for Avery Johnson as the next coach of the Nets.
“I love Avery. Love him,” said Devin Harris, who played for Johnson in Dallas and hopes to do so again with the Nets.
“Avery would be a good coach anywhere.”
The Nets will search for a coach when their catastrophic season, which continues tonight in Milwaukee (8:00, WBBR-1130 AM, no TV), concludes in another week.
There could be a pursuit of Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, though three times publicly he has said he is not interested. Jeff Van Gundy also is a favorite. And Johnson is in the mix.
Harris, whose future in New Jersey may depend on the draft lottery, wants to see good times with the Nets after this awful season. And he’d like to see it with Johnson, who won a title as a player with the Spurs in 1999 and then posted a stunning .735 winning percentage (194-70, including a Dallas record 67-win season) in three-plus campaigns with the Mavs. Why?
“He knows how to win, simple as that,” Harris said. “He’s a great coach, a great motivator. Now whether we had problems there or not, we won games.”
Of the reports Harris and Johnson clashed in Dallas, the active point guard insists it was just a matter of a young player wanting to do more and the retired player/coach holding the reins. In hindsight, Johnson was right, Harris concedes.
“That was the only thing we argued about,” he said.
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Jackie Thorn, mother of Nets president Rod Thorn, died Monday at age 90.