WASHINGTON — The Nets got the new year started in resounding fashion with Wednesday’s stunning 110-93 win in Oklahoma City over the Thunder.
Now, with a soft schedule in front of them beginning tonight against the 4-26 Wizards, they have a chance to not only put some distance between themselves and the .500 mark again, but also help interim coach P.J. Carlesimo make a case to keep the job through the regular season.
After a rough December that saw the Nets begin the month 3-10 before Avery Johnson was fired last week, the team is now 3-1 under Carlesimo after bouncing back from a blowout loss Monday against the Spurs by coming up with easily their best win of the season in nearly leading wire-to-wire against the Thunder in one of the league’s most hostile environments.
That win now gives the chance to build some momentum early in the new year, with five of their next six games coming against teams with losing records, and four of them to be played in Brooklyn.
It’s a stretch that could allow the Nets to get off to a terrific start under Carlesimo if they are able to take advantage of it.
“This will be as meaningless as the San Antonio loss [on Monday] if we don’t build a bridge to this and bring the same kind of energy to Washington [tonight] and Sacramento [on Saturday],” Carlesimo said after Wednesday’s win over the Thunder.
While the Nets are still expected to reach out to their top target, Phil Jackson, at some point, getting off to that kind of start would only help Carlesimo’s chances of staying in the job for the remainder of the season.
In a radio interview yesterday, Carlesimo praised Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov, whom he sat down with for lunch last Saturday in midtown during Prokhorov’s brief visit to see a pair of Nets wins over the Bobcats and Cavaliers in Carlesimo’s first two games in charge.
“All of the owners in the league want to win, but a lot of them meddle in the day-to-day, or won’t put the money up, and he does neither,” Carlesimo said on WFAN. “Is he hands on, and does [Nets general manager Billy King] know what he thinks? Of course he does.
“But he lets Billy do his job, he lets the coach do his job … as a coach you would love to have a no-excuse job.”
At the same time, Carlesimo reiterated the stance he has taken since assuming the head job after Prokhorov fired Johnson last week, saying he isn’t worrying himself with how he needs to try to convince management to give him the job on a full-time basis.
“If things work out, it’s only going to be because the players played really well, and the players have been really receptive. If they’d given me a five-year contract the first day and said, ‘You’re the guy going forward,’ I don’t think I’d be coaching any differently, honestly. You just have to do what you do, and I almost look at it like a day-to-day thing. It’s a great opportunity that I didn’t want to happen this way, but it’s here and now we’ve got to go forward.”
Carlesimo also said he could understand why the Nets, no matter how he does with the job on an interim basis, would be interested in hiring Jackson and his 11 championship rings as a head coach.
“It’s not something I can control,” Carlesimo said. “I don’t think there’s too many people that the GM or the coach, if they thought they could get Phil Jackson, might be willing to pull the plug. When John Wooden was alive, if you were a college coach and John Wooden wanted to come to your school, you were probably in trouble.
“That’s the way it is … there’s always going to be a coach [who’s] the flavor of the month, or is more attractive.”