With the Nets season officially in the books, it’s time to look back at the year that was. We’ll look back at a different player each weekday, before wrapping up with the coaching staff and front office. Next up: Jason Kidd
Season recap
Kidd wasn’t exactly on the radar to replace P.J. Carlesimo when the Nets chose to let go of their interim coach following their seven-game, first-round playoff loss to the Bulls in 2013, considering Kidd still was competing in the playoffs for the Knicks. Several weeks later, the best player in the franchise’s NBA history was sitting in the Barclays Center in a suit and tie after becoming the team’s head coach.
At the time, Kidd was expected to get some time to grow into the job. The Nets weren’t expected to be serious contenders in the East, but had a solid core of players in Deron Williams, Joe Johnson and Brook Lopez that would allow the Nets to be a good team and for Kidd to learn the intricacies of the job without the immediate pressure of coaching a championship contender.
That all changed when general manager Billy King swung a draft night trade for Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Jason Terry. Suddenly, with the infusion of aging icons Pierce and Garnett – plus the signing of Andrei Kirilenko, among others, in July – the Nets looked like a team capable of challenging the Heat, Pacers and Bulls atop the Eastern Conference, which turned up the pressure on Kidd to produce right away.
To help aid his transition, Kidd hired an impressive coaching staff, led by his old boss with the Nets, Lawrence Frank, to help him learn the ropes. Once the season began, though, it was clear things weren’t going to be so easy.
Kidd spent the summer and preseason talking about playing through Brook Lopez and using the Nets’ size to punish their opponents, much like how the Pacers and Bulls play. But the Nets just looked slow when they played big and got off to a brutal start, losing 10 of 12 games at one point in November and finishing the first two months of the season with a 10-21 record – a stretch capped off by a humiliating blowout loss in San Antonio on New Year’s Eve.
Then, of course, there was this, which earned Kidd a $50,000 fine:
Along the way, Kidd parted ways with Frank suddenly in a pregame press conference on Dec. 3, citing “different philosophies” between himself and Frank, who was “re-assigned” to filing daily reports, just months after inking a six-year deal. And Lopez, the team’s best player, was lost for the season with yet another injury to his right foot.
Things looked bleak following that blowout loss to the Spurs, but on Jan. 2 against the Thunder, Kidd opted to make a lineup change, inserting Shaun Livingston into the starting five and moving Joe Johnson to small forward, Paul Pierce to power forward and Kevin Garnett to center. The Nets would win that game on a Johnson buzzer-beater over Serge Ibaka, and the Nets would take off, performing well enough to earn Kidd Coach of the Month awards for January and March, something no rookie coach ever had done before.
The starting lineup switch — which also came with a much more aggressive approach defensively and an increase in 3-point shooting offensively — led to the Nets climbing back into the playoff race and finishing the regular season with a 44-38 record, good for sixth place in the East and a first-round series against the Raptors and Dwane Casey, an assistant coach when Kidd played in Dallas.
But it was Kidd who made the coaching move that won the series, inserting Alan Anderson into the starting lineup for Livingston prior to Game 6, with the Nets trailing 3-2 in the series. By putting another 3-point shooter on the floor, the Nets got the Raptors’ defense moving, and that was enough for them to move into the second round against the Heat.
Kidd didn’t do a bad job against the Heat’s Erik Spoelstra, one of the league’s top coaches, in that series. However, the Nets’ offense did get stagnant in the final minutes of Games 4 and 5 trying to protect leads, allowing the Heat to complete a pair of comebacks and send them home for the summer.
Outlook for next season
As much as it was a tale of two seasons for the Nets, it definitely was for Kidd, who went from being laughed at over the first couple months of his first season on the sidelines to earning league-wide respect for the way he turned the Nets around following their poor start and Lopez’s injury.
Along the way, he found a distinct style of play for his team, along with an identity. It just didn’t happen in the expected way.
The Nets learned during the 2013-14 campaign that, despite his early-season issues, they have found their long-term answer at coach in Kidd. Though the team didn’t progress as far in the postseason as it hoped, finding that out was as important as anything that happened this season.
Tomorrow: Billy King