Mikhail Prokhorov says Nets need to be disciplined
Monday morning at Barclays Center, six years after Mikhail Prokhorov took ownership of the Brooklyn Nets, one year after his ambitious deadline to win an NBA title came and went without realizing his goal and one day after he put his longtime GM Billy King and latest coach Lionel Hollins out to pasture, Prokhorov sat with reporters and analyzed what's happened to a franchise with immense promise but dim on-court prospects for the forseeable future.
“We cannot be everything at the same time,” Prokhorov said of his team moving forward, after detailing the many identities his Nets have tried to inhabit in his time at the helm. “I want to stress also one thing, and for me it is a very important lesson. We are playing in the best market in the world. And of course it is a market that makes great pressure, a lot of attention, a very active press. That is why we need players and a coach who can resist this pressure. Who can survive.”
Accordingly, Prokhorov set about charting a course with a long list of potential stewards, a process he expects to take a long time —“disciplined” is the word he used for it.
It is striking given that the current path to the circumstances facing the franchise — a 10-27 record, massive hauls of young talent and draft picks sent without protection to other teams in exchange for marginal veterans — have landed the Nets in this position.
As Prokhorov put it, making a change was the easy part.
“After some time, I have to look at a reality, and make a change,” Prokhorov said. “And that's what I have done.”
What happens after this is very much up in the air. Prokhorov expressed a desire to hire two separate people as coach and GM — he described a “friendly contradiction” between the two roles — but didn't speak about any rumored names, such as Kentucky coach John Calipari.
For now, the head coach is Tony Brown, a Hollins assistant, and whatever the future holds, Brown isn't looking too far ahead. In a sobering reminder for a team that needs to wait until 2019 to control its own first round draft pick, Brown reminded reporters that there are some more immediate challenges to address.
“I think that's going too far down the road,” Brown said when asked about his goals for the season. “Listen, we're a 10-27 team. Obviously we haven't played well. We've had some key injuries. Our goal is to up our energy level. We want to play freer. We want to have a little bit more fun. But I'm not going in there and telling them 'Hey, we need to make the playoffs.' Our job is to play a little bit harder, a little bit smarter.”
All of which is of limited help to the pair of veterans who signed long-term extensions in Brooklyn this summer, Brook Lopez and Thaddeus Young, and who now face the task of the Nets starting over. Neither one is new to that process — Lopez is now playing for his eighth coach in eight years as a Net, while Young has gone through this rebuild in both Philadelphia and Minnesota. Both found out by means other than the team itself — Lopez's phone started blowing up, while Young said he saw it “on the ticker.”
“You do get frustrated at times,” Young said, sitting and explaining to reporters in yet another city how he planned to hold down the fort amid massive changes. “But it's not my first rodeo. I've been here before. I've seen a lot of different GMs. I've seen a lot of different coaches. And we'll just continue to play.”
