Together they can learn what it means to be a significant part of that sporting tapestry called New York City. Star player, star owner: Consider this your official welcome-to-the-neighborhood party.
Coinciding with the end of your honeymoon.
Understand one thing at the top: Avery Johnson earns this dismissal on merit. This isn’t the Lakers gangplanking Mike Brown after five games. A coach, ultimately, is defined by his numbers and Johnson’s were grisly: a 60-116 record with the Nets, an 11-4 start to the season (which yielded November’s coach of the year award, a lovely parting gift) that rapidly descended to the 14-14 mess that P. J. Carlesimo inherits Friday, the dysfunctional blob that will be the challenge of Phil Jackson, Nate McMillan, various Van Gundys or Someone Else in the weeks and months to come.
So, no: No need to feel sorry for the departed. He had time. And if you’ve seen the team playing under him it’s clear the players weren’t buying what he was selling. That gets coaches canned every time, and has from the beginning of time.
The bigger concern are the two biggest names that remain in the organization’s employ: Deron Williams, around whom everything in Barclays Center was built except for Paisano’s, and Mikhail Prokhorov, whose looming, booming presence oversees (and underwrites) all of it. And here’s the thing: We have no idea if either man is equal to the dueling (and intertwined) tasks before him.
Williams now has one of the dubious records in all of sports: In a league known to harbor (and often reward) coach killers — think Magic Johnson, Jason Kidd and Carmelo Anthony, to name three — Williams may well be the first to claim two, adding Johnson’s pelt to the Hall of Fame wall mounting of Jerry Sloan.
The Nets were only able to acquire Williams in the first place because he was collateral damage after his stare-down with Sloan two years ago. If this bothered anyone around the Nets it was hard to notice — New Jersey always was the basketball equivalent of the tree falling in the empty forest. Williams’ diva behavior — and mostly dreadful play — have not been so benignly received by Brooklyn fans who were told to expect — and demand — a product and a player worthy of New York scrutiny.
Oh, the Nets want you to believe this was not Williams’ doing. They said it repeatedly yesterday. Which is interesting for two reasons:
1) As an old sportswriter named Oscar Shakespeare once said: “They doth protest too much.”
2) Johnson became a Fired Man Coaching the moment Williams cleared his throat a few weeks ago and aired his displeasure about his system; for better or worse, a coach serves at the pleasure of his star and, for better or worse, Williams has the pedigree if not the chops. At some point, the version of Williams in which the Nets invested $98 million — and so much more — had better show up. This isn’t Salt Lake City or Champaign, Ill. It can get powerfully unpleasant in a hurry around here for Williams if he isn’t careful.
Prokhorov? He has spent money, he has taken whole passages out of the Rex Ryan Book of Swagger, he has vowed to deliver a champion to Atlantic Avenue, and that’s just swell. He has allowed his general manager, Billy King (number of playoff games won by teams on his watch since 2003: one) to acquire an eclectic batch of talent that always seemed destined to be less than the sum of their parts; it probably isn’t coincidence the Hawks, who all but drove Joe Johnson to the Battery Tunnel, are already five games better in the standings than Brooklyn.
Prokhorov could be colorful in East Rutherford, could buy his silly billboards, could make a grandstanding play for LeBron James with his 1 percent wingman, Jay-Z. Even once the furniture was in place in Brooklyn, he reveled in taking shots at the Knicks. Which means Prokhorov has quickly learned the lessons of hundreds of hopefuls before him who crashed and burned at Rucker Park or W. 4th St. or St. John’s Rec Center on Prospect Place: You’d better have the game to back up the gab.
Does he? The Nets acted boldly here, and deserve credit for that. But firing people is the easy part. Assembling a group too good to fire? That’s the tricky part. Especially now that people are actually paying attention to you.