You can find irony there, if you want: The guy who was once known as among the most volatile in a volatile profession providing stability and maturity and a calming voice to a situation that not long ago sat on the precipice of fiasco.
You can find inevitability if you like: The Nets have played eight games under P.J. Carlesimo and they have won seven of them, and this certainly isn’t the first time we’ve seen that around here.
Mike Woodson inherited 18-25 across town last year and finished 18-6. Hell, in 2004, when the Nets still played their games two rivers to the west, Lawrence Frank won his first 14 games after Jersey’s players staged a palace coup that removed Byron Scott.
And both descriptions apply.
But so does this one: In a year when we envisioned dozens of possible feel-good stories accompanying the Nets’ move to Brooklyn, this is the one, right now, that feels the best: P.J. Carlesimo making the most of his fourth — and what almost certainly will be his last — chance to be a head coach in the NBA.
It is a terrific story not only because all you need to do is spend five minutes around Carlesimo to see he understands how his youthful tempers might have sabotaged him earlier in his career (not that he — or anyone else — deserved the response Latrell Sprewell opted for). He understands even when he was one of the most successful coaches in the college game, he made mistakes, probably was armed with too many rough edges and too high a volume.
It’s a splendid story, not only because when he was hired it was assumed he would be a temporary caretaker while the Nets went in search of a Zen Master or a Van Gundy to be named later. Instead, he quietly has helped turn the Nets into one of the more enjoyable teams to watch in the East as they’ve stealthily gained on the Knicks in the Atlantic.
No, in a year when the Nets are committed to celebrating their city, celebrating their new identity as a civic mainstay, perhaps the best part of all of this is the unlikely arrival of Carlesimo, who played his college ball in the Bronx, who made his coaching bones on Staten Island, and now gets one more crack at the whistle and the clipboard in Brooklyn.
The Nets didn’t necessarily need this pleasing, parochial happenstance. But it does make it that much better. Carlesimo came out of Scranton Prep and was a reserve on the ’71 Fordham team that still is one of the city’s most beloved. When he was at Wagner he was a part of a young generation of coaches — including Jimmy Valvano at Iona and Mike Krzyzewski at Army — eager to take the sport over.
And, mostly, they did. Valvano won his title at N.C. State. Krzyzewski has won four (and counting) at Duke. And if not for a referee named John Clougherty blowing one of the most egregious late-game whistles you’ll ever see, Carlesimo would have won the unlikeliest one of all, at Seton Hall in 1989. And if that happens, who knows how different the path might have been for P.J. after that.
As it was, he left the Hall, tried the NBA, won some games, lost more. He famously told Sprewell to put more mustard on a practice pass one day in Oakland, and Sprewell’s fingers infamously wound up around Carlesimo’s neck. He never deserved that to be his legacy.
Now he has this season, this team, this chance, with his 64th birthday somehow lurking in May.
Not everything about this Nets season has gone according to plan. And in this case, that’s a good thing. With a chance to be a great thing.
Whack Back at Vac
Bruce Welsch: Why is that when watching that joke of a press conference the other day with Woody and Rex, I got a terrible flashback of Dolan and Isaiah?
Vac: Here’s the question I have: In a crowded field, has Woody Johnson actually surpassed the Wilpon Gang as our worst owner in New York?
@jericson01: I don’t understand the mentality among Hall of Fame voters that says a guy like Mike Piazza doesn’t belong this year, but I’ll vote for him next year. It’s nonsense.
@MikeVacc: As a guy who has changed his mind on candidates, I have no problem with voters changing their minds. But to withhold to prevent a first-ballot is silly. If everyone felt that way, the player would drop off the ballot.
Chris Barish: You wrote that Bernie Williams at times looked like a Hall of Famer, yet I would argue he is a Hall of Famer. Especially if you compare his stats with Barry Larkin, who was a “shoo-in.”
Vac: I posed this question on Twitter: I know how popular Don Mattingly was, but couldn’t you argue Bernie had the better career? And yet Donnie Baseball got enough votes to stay on the ballot and Bernie is off forever.
Lou Bonacker: You are right. The Vets Committees and the BBWWA have snubbed Gil Hodges and installed far lesser players in the Hall.
Vac: At some point this is a wrong that has to be righted, right?
Vac’s Whacks
The Knicks probably weren’t as good as they looked when they were 18-5, and probably aren’t as bad as they’ve looked the last two weeks, but they really could do themselves a favor and start winning their winnable games, beginning today at the Garden against the future Pelicans.
* I’m not sure the full force of how dreadful the Jets were this year really hit home until we saw some of the teams who did make the AFC playoffs last week.
* Rewatched Season 1 of “The Sopranos” this week, and I have to plead guilty: I was so captivated by shows that came after — “The Wire,” “Breaking Bad,” “Mad Men” — that I’ve grown to criminally underrate just how great the boys at the Bing really were. Won’t make that mistake again. I swear. Honest.
* The most enjoyable team to watch in basketball right now — any level — is John Beilein’s University of Michigan Wolverines.