One of the silver linings in last year’s injury-filled Nets season was their ability to mine talent from the D-League. Besides the most obvious example in Gerald Green, who became one of the league’s biggest surprises last season after getting called up, the Nets also used their own D-League affiliate, the Springfield Armor, to supply them with guard Jerry Smith and forward Dennis Horner.
That synergy will continue this weekend, when the Armor hold an open tryout at the Nets’ practice facility.
“The idea is that the Springfield Armor are part of the Nets,” said Milton Lee, the Nets’ General Manager of Minor League Operations. “We’re trying to use it on many different platforms, the most important being developing our Nets players.
“Secondly, it’s developing players we have in Springfield and identifying D-League candidates for the NBA. And, thirdly, it’s searching outside of people already in the league for potential D-League caliber and maybe even NBA caliber players.”
Saturday’s tryout is an opportunity for players to be seen by, among others, Lee and the Armor’s coaching staff of head coach Bob MacKinnon and assistant Chris Carrawell.
Under coach Avery Johnson, a vocal proponent for the D-League as a whole, and general manager Billy King, the Armor have been brought fully under the Nets umbrella. MacKinnon and Carrawell install and run the Nets’ offensive and defensive sets, so any player that gets called up – as well as any young player who gets sent down from the Nets for seasoning – knows what they need to do at both ends of the court.
Both MacKinnon and Carrawell will be with the Nets throughout training camp, and they also joined Johnson’s coaching staff at the end of last season and with the Nets’ Summer League team, with MacKinnon coaching the final game in Orlando.
“The key thing is having a head coach and a GM, which Avery and Billy have been, that’s enthusiastic and 100 percent on board, and see the value in it,” Lee said. “It’s an embracing by senior management of the potential of the D-League … our assistant coaches were here for our college workouts during the spring, they were coaches on our NBA Summer League team.
“It’s total immersion and integration of the staffs, so that it’s all the Brooklyn Nets way.”
And while it’s clearly a long shot for any players at such a tryout to make it to the NBA, all they have to do is look at the example of Horner from last year as proof that it’s possible. Horner made the Nets’ regular season roster after receiving a training camp invitation, and then received a second call-up later in the season after the Armor initially saw him at a national tryout.
“We scouted him at a national tryout and we drafted him based on what we saw and the conversations that we had and the research that we did after that,” Lee said. “So, it’s certainly true, and the proof is in the pudding with what happened last year.”
As Lee tries to get players to commit to play for the Armor, all he has to do is point out the examples of both Horner and Smith, along with that of Jeff Foote, who was called up by the Hornets last year and also played on the Nets’ Summer League team in Orlando in July, to show that if you do well in Springfield, you have a chance of being noticed.
“It’s so easy to sell because we’re doing it,” Lee said. “Nobody can say [we] are full of it, because all you have to do is look at what’s gone on with our players, our Springfield team and [the Nets].”
tbontemps@nypost.com