From time to time, we like to do deep dives on interesting teams of the past, like the Penny/Shaq Magic or the Barkley Rockets, that came close to the threshold only to fall apart. Today, we are going to look at a team that never really came close to winning but was always interesting to me, the Derrick Coleman/Kenny Anderson Nets of the early 1990s. This duo was billed as the Stockton/Malone of the 1990s. Alas, DC and Kenny were deemed to be the ultimate Generation X slackers, who failed to pull together a sustained run because of a lack of maturity. The blame was so palpable that, in 1995, Sports Illustrated made DC the literal cover photo for the selfish modern NBA player. The photo depicted a frowning and open-mouthed DC with the following understated header: “Waaaaaah!! Petulant Prima Donnas Like Derrick Coleman Are Bad News For the NBA.”
How fair was his characterization? I was an actual Nets fan at the time and closely watched that team and, while DC had his flaws, the situation wasn’t that simple. With the benefit of 30 years of hindsight, I thought we could take another look at the DC/Kenny Nets and see if we learn anything new about that group, why they failed to contend, and what they might have done differently.
The Nets Circa 1990
The Nets have had some down times in their history, but the most depressing time might have been the 1986-1990 period. Sure, the 12-70 Nets in 2009-10 and the current rebuild have been bad moments but the late 1980s Nets offered a distinct lack of hope and directionless malaise that the other bad stretches did not. In 1985-86, the Nets lost their star point guard Micheal Ray Richardson to a drug relapse, which effectively got him banned from the NBA permanently. The Nets cratered afterwards, losing a ton and bleeding attendance:
1986-87: 24-58, 16th in attendance
1987-88: 19-63, 15th in attendance
1988-89: 26-56, 21st in attendance
1989-90: 17-65, 25th in attendance
While the Nets didn’t trade away their high draft picks during this stretch, the picks could’ve been better:
1986: Pearl Washington (13th overall)
1987: Dennis Hopson (3rd overall)
1988: Chris Morris (4th overall)
1989: Mookie Blaylock (12th overall)
Pearl was a total bust. Hopson could shoot a bit but he was drafted over several future All-Stars and Hall of Famers. Morris was a great athlete and a decent pro but didn’t make good decisions and was taken over two much better players in Mitch Richmond and Hersey Hawkins. Mookie ended up being very good but we’ll discuss more on that later. In short, the Nets were a hopeless team with little star power, playing in a swamp. The Nets tanked quite well in 1989-90, finishing the season a hideous 5-34 and earning the top pick, finally giving the Nets a little excitement after a half decade of boring futility.
DC and the 1990 Draft
Coleman was a four-year starter at power forward at Syracuse and the consensus top pick in 1990. He was big and strong (he led the Big East in rebounding three seasons in a row) and had the handle and shot of a smaller player. He mostly improved in stats over his four years, and even showed three-point range as a senior (15-41, .366%). The one quasi-warning sign came in his blocks, where he had 127 as junior and only 67 as a senior. This drop might’ve shown he was giving a little less effort but he was still getting 2.0 bpg and the junior year spike in blocks looked anomalous as compared to DC’s early career. At the time, Utah GM Scott Layden compared DC to a young Karl Malone.
A June 23, 1990 UPI preview of the draft didn’t consider DC to be a high end number one pick. The article quotes Timberwolves assistant GM Billy McKinney as stating that: “[t]his year’s draft does not feature a marquee-type player like a Danny Manning, David Robinson or Patrick Ewing, but it is deep with many talented pro prospects.” The article also reports that the Nets “are said to be willing to trade the pick for some established veterans. They reportedly have told the other 26 teams they will listen to all reasonable offers.” In case you are wondering, the article reported the following potential offers: “[o]ne rumor coming out of the draft combine in Chicago was the Lakers offering Byron Scott and A.C. Green to the Nets for their top pick. Another had Detroit trading John Salley and Mark Aguirre for the Nets’ No. 1.”
Do either of these hauls sound fair? Not to me but let’s at least check the numbers. Here are the actual player stats at the time so we can truly capture the snapshot of value as if was offered. Let’s start with the Lakers:
Byron Scott 1989-90: age 28, 33.7 mpg, 15.5 ppg, .546 TS%, 3.1 rpg, 3.6 apg, 14.3 PER, .111 WS48, 0.6 BPM
AC Green 1989-90: age 26, 33 mpg, 12.9 ppg, .548 TS%, 8.7 rpg, 1.1 apg, 14.7 PER, .137 WS48, -0.6 BPM
Scott wasn’t particularly young and had declined markedly from his peak in 1987-88. He’d have two more years as a solid starter before transitioning to a valuable reserve. Green was a little younger but was also a solid starter. In terms of salary, the players were not really that cheap either. Scott was slated to make $1.1 million and Green $1.75 million, which sounds low today, but made up a good chunk of L.A.’s $12.1 million payroll (fourth highest in the NBA). So, the talent wasn’t great and the value wasn’t either. This is not the type of package that is worth trading a top pick for, particularly when you have a 17-win team that needs young talent.
Now, let’s look at the Detroit offer:
Mark Aguirre 1989-90: age 30, 25.7 mpg, 14.1 ppg, .544 TS%, 3.9 rpg, 1.9 apg, .136 WS48, 1.0 BPM
John Salley 1989-90: age 25, 23.3 mpg, 7.2 ppg, .575 TS%, 5.4 rpg, 0.8 apg, 1.9 bpg,.152 WS48, 1.5 BPM
This package also seems weak. Aguirre was turning 31 and was set to make $1.1 million. While he could still score, he had very little re-trade value due to his age and reputation as a malcontent in Dallas. It’s hard to see how he helps a young rebuilding team. Salley was more intriguing. He was pretty young and cheap ($575,000) and had a unique defensive profile. Still, Salley was a niche defender for a good team and was not a scorer (the Nets already had two such players in Sam Bowie and Chris Dudley). Ultimately, Salley just did not profile as enough value for the first pick overall. The Nets obviously agreed and ended up drafting DC.
1990-91: Some Moderate Improvement
The Nets entered 1990-91 with the goals of developing Coleman and their other young players (Mookie Blaylock and Chris Morris) and being quasi-respectable as a team. The Nets accomplished most of the goals:
-They improved to 26-56 and had the point differential of a 29-53 team.
-DC put up 18.4 ppg and 10.3 rpg and won Rookie of the Year by a wide margin.
-Mookie improved quite a bit, jacking up his TS% from a truly awful .415% as a rookie to .455% (not great but at least closer to acceptable).
-New GM Willis Reed made a great trade where he picked up Drazen Petrovic and rookie Terry Mills for Greg Anderson (who was filler) and a first-round pick (ended up being the 13th pick in 1992, Bryant Stith). Petro was a great shooter but was buried behind Terry Porter, Clyde Drexler, and Danny Ainge on a title contending team. He would go on to have two great years in Jersey but the Nets kept him on a short leash in 1990-91. Petrovic played 20 mpg and did not start a single game. His bench stats were pretty good though: He shot .500% from the field and .373% from three-point range on 3.2 attempts per game. He was clearly set up to be a starter in 1991-92.
Despite a mostly positive season, there were some rumblings that Coleman might be a tough personality to deal with. Back in the days before the rookie salary cap (pre-1995), draftees had tremendous leverage and DC wielded it before signing with the Nets for five years and $15 million after a protracted hold out. Coleman then declared (not incorrectly), that “I am the franchise,” which certainly irked some when he was instantly making more money than most of the vets.
In January 1991, Jack McCallum wrote a column about DC that suggested some issues: “Coleman has drawn mixed reviews. While Cleveland Cavalier coach Lenny Wilkens said of him, ‘I like his personality for the game,’ another coach, speaking anonymously, declared, ‘He’s a great talent but a funny kid.’ And he wasn’t referring to Coleman’s one-liners.”
The same article indicated that DC and coach Bill Fitch were having some discord: “Predictably, Coleman and his coach, Bill Fitch, will not be exchanging Valentine’s Day cards next month. ‘Yeah, Derrick’s mad at me right now,’ Fitch said last week, ‘because I’ve been talking about what horrible shape he’s in.’ Coleman denies he is out of condition, but he has missed five games this season because of those nagging injuries.”
The 1992 Complete Handbook of Pro Basketball DC profile was mostly effusive but pointed out a few issues. Specifically, DC needed a “dose of modesty. Of David Robinson, he noted, ‘He reminds me a lot of myself.’” The bio also cryptically stated that the “[q]uiet rap from some teammates: needs to think TEAM more, but not so much on court.”
The 1991 Draft: Kenny or Someone Else?
The Nets nabbed the second pick of the 1991 draft and were faced with a difficult decision. The Nets were seemingly set at shooting guard and power forward but had more potential need at the other three positions. Here are the 1990-91 stats for the likely pre-draft starters:
PG, Mookie Blaylock: Age 23, 35.9 mpg, 14.1 ppg, .455 TS%, 3.5 rpg, 6.1 apg, 2.3 spg, 13.1 PER, .040 WS48, -0.7 BPM
SG, Drazen Petrovic: Age 26, 20.5 mpg, 12.6 ppg, .574 TS%, 2.1 rpg, 1.5 apg, 16.8 PER, .123 WS48, -0.4 BPM
SF, Chris Morris: Age 25, 32.3 mpg, 13.2 ppg, .487 TS%, 6.6 rpg, 2.8 apg, 14.7 PER, .085 WS48, 1.0 BPM
PF, Derrick Coleman: Age 23, 35.2 mpg, .527 TS%, 18.4 ppg, 10.3 rpg, 2.2 apg, 17.6 PER, .108 WS48, 0.4 BPM
C, Sam Bowie: Age 29, 30.9 mpg, 12.9 ppg, .486%, 7.7 rpg, 2.4 apg, 14.1 PER, .066 WS48, -0.8 BPM
Mookie, Morris, and Bowie all were solid but had the same weaknesses: terrible shooting. To that point, the Nets were 25th on offense and the 13th on defense. Also, Bowie was much older than the other two and clearly was a short-term solution. Ultimately, the best player in the draft was arguably 11th pick Terrell Brandon but consensus top four prospects at the time were at four different positions: Larry Johnson, Dikembe Mutombo, Kenny Anderson, and Billy Owens. LJ was taken first and the Nets had a prospect option at all three of their weaker starting positions. This was a tough choice because there was no apparent second choice. Here are their 1990-91 college stats:
Mutombo: Age 24, 34.1 mpg, 15.2 ppg, .626 TS%, 12.2 rpg, 1.6 apg, 0.6 spg, 4.7 bpg
Owens: Age 21, 38 mpg, 23.3 ppg, .560 TS%, .397 3FG%, 11.6 rpg, 3.5 apg, 2.4 spg, 1.2 bpg
Anderson: Age 20, 38.9 mpg, 25.9 ppg, .535 TS%, .351 3FG%, 5.7 rpg, 5.6 apg, 3.0 spg, 0.1 bpg
Filling in the gaps that the numbers leave out, Brady Moretensen did a detailed preview of each of the prospects at the time:
On Mutombo: “His great size and long arms made him one of the best shotblockers in collegiate basketball history. Limited offensively, the 7-foot-2 Hoya needs to improve his array of post moves…’ He’s better than two-thirds of the NBA centers playing,’ said Miami Heat Director of Player Personnel Stu Inman….’He’ll be a man from Day One,” Inman said. “Emotionally, he’s a little older and will make a quicker adjustment than most rookies.’…. Mutombo, a native of Zaire, is already 25 years old, though. That may worry some teams.”
On Owens: “{P]layed all five positions but is most comfortable as a 3-man. He can either take a big man outside and shoot over him or dribble around him. Smaller foes have trouble with his exceptional post-up abilities.”
On Anderson: “[V]ery quick with the ball, makes directional changes faster than any guard in college, and is an exceptional rebounder for his size. His weak point is his shooting, which suddenly went AWOL several times during the past season. Streaky is an appropriate adjective when describing his shot.”
There were good arguments for and against drafting all three players. Apparently, Reed and Fitch wanted Owens, who was more reliable than the mercurial Morris, but were overruled by ownership who liked Anderson and felt he had the most potential star power. Anderson had a nice career but, with the benefit of hindsight, we know that Mookie Blaylock was also developing into an All-Star and the Nets would soon have a gaping hole at center that Dikembe would’ve filled perfectly. Owens would start out strong but wear down with the injuries quickly.
1991-92: Progress but Everyone Hates Fitch
Fitch was a hard ass old school coach, who did not mince words or make friends easily. He resigned from Boston in 1983, after a disappointing playoff loss to Milwaukee and with the Celtics in some disarray. Though Larry Bird always liked Fitch, most of his players felt differently. Robert Parish felt that Fitch “was lacking in the people skills.” Peter May wrote in “The Last Banner” that Fitch was “abrasive” and described how Fitch treated the low-key assistant coach KC Jones so rudely that Jones jumped Fitch in a fit of rage.
Later, when Fitch was fired by the Rockets in 1988, many members of the teams criticized his methods as well. Hakeem Olajuwon said at the time that: “[a]ll I know is that the players say they are afraid to make a mistake. If they make a mistake, he takes them out. Nobody knows their role on this team. I don’t know my role either.” The pattern was clear. Fitch made his teams better but would have a limited shelf life because his management style was incredibly annoying. So, you can imagine that if the legendary Celtics of the1980s and Hakeem had issues with Fitch, there were going to be similar problems with young Gen Xers like Coleman and Anderson.
Fitch did not disappoint. Anderson’s contract negotiations were protracted, and he didn’t sign until November 9, 1991, three games into the season. At the press conference announcing the signing of Anderson, Fitch threw a fit because the Nets had to renounce the rights to hustling deep bench guys, Jud Buechler and Dave Feitl, to fit Anderson under the salary cap. Fitch lashed out in oddly frank terms: “[o]ur ownership made a horrible decision. I’m ticked. I want to win. You can’t win if you’re not going to be able to control your own basketball team.” The New York Times reported that Fitch considered Buechler “the perfect bench player” but the subtext seemed to be that Fitch never wanted to draft Anderson and was annoyed at ownership. Not a great start for Anderson who told the press: “I’m not the one who said to [cut Buechler], I’m an innocent man. I’m just here to play and be Kenny Anderson.”
With that great tone setting press conference, the Nets started off an execrable 2-11 in their first 13 games. Things were starting to go haywire. On December 7, 1991, Coleman, who was nursing a sprained ankle, blasted Fitch for holding DC out of a game until late in the third quarter: “[y]ou let a player sit on the bench for three quarters, then you expect him to come out and turn it on? I felt good. I told him that. You call that coaching?” DC definitely had a point.
On December 18, 1991, UPI reported that Fitch was going to be fired and replaced by former North Carolina State coach Jim Valvano and summarized the vibes thusly: “management had…been angered by Anderson’s lack of playing time since his signing and the team’s deteriorating attitude towards its head coach. One such example was that of star forward Derrick Coleman, who showed his disdain for his coach by stepping to the foul line to shoot technicals when Fitch wanted someone else to shoot.“ The Valvano deal apparently fell through and Fitch remained coach (the Nets’ first choice was Rick Pitino but he was not ready to leave Kentucky).
Fitch had all sorts of drama the rest of the way. He buried Anderson much of the season in favor of Blaylock, which wasn’t crazy since Anderson was so raw. The problem was that Fitch appeared to have no regard for Anderson’s future at all. Fitch also had run ins with Morris and Petrovic. DC, however, was his real nemesis. Coleman was rightly peeved about Fitch’s decision to bench him until the fourth quarter of the December 7, 1991 game but the antipathy continued and they bickered all season. In late season games, DC and Morris refused to re-enter games and it wasn’t pretty. The New York Times gave the details:
“Tuesday in Miami, power forward Coleman told Fitch to ‘get out of my face’ when ordered back into the game, which the Nets went on to win. Thursday, en route to a 119-113 loss to Indiana in the Meadowlands, the refusal came from Morris, upset because Fitch had removed him with 2 minutes 41 seconds to play and the score tied at 107-107 after he missed two free throws. Fitch tried to send Morris back in after Chuck Person’s shot put the Pacers up by 4 points with 25.8 seconds to play.
‘I don’t know why he took me out,’ Morris said after finishing with 16 points, 6 rebounds, 4 assists, 2 blocked shots in 38 minutes of play, and 8 points in the Nets’ 43-27 third quarter. ‘I was busting my butt. So after he took me out I refused to go back. That’s all. I’d do it again if he took me out like that again.’
Fitch wasn’t backing down yesterday. ‘I’m going to do exactly what I’ve been doing,’ he said. Fitch doesn’t think fines will work with rebellious players. ‘If it’s money that has to drive them, chances are they’ve all got so much of it that they’re not going to get there. Did I take Chris Morris out because he missed two free throws? Hell, no. I took him out because he hadn’t had a rest and from my experience missing free throws by a 70 percent free-throw shooter is the first sign of being tired. I wanted to put him back in because I thought that was about the time we could use a 5-point play.’”
Yikes does that sound like a toxic environment. The players detested Fitch and were now acting wholly unprofessional and immature. Despite this, perhaps unified in hatred of Fitch, the Nets rallied to finish up the season 38-31 and make the playoffs. Drazen scored 20.6 ppg and shot .444% from three-point range and DC also showed improvement (19.8 ppg, 9.5 rpg). The Nets were outmanned by a strong Cavs team in the playoffs but Coleman dominated and the Nets were able to win a game at home and be competitive in a Game 4 loss.
Fitch resigned after the season, having left another team better off than he had gotten it but also wreaking some havoc along the way. In the end, Fitch got improvement from Mookie, Petro, and DC that boosted The Nets’ offense up to 18th in the NBA, while maintaining the same solid defense (14th). But the only avenues for a jump up to serious playoff success lay with improvement from DC and Anderson, whose relationships with Fitch were untenable. Fitch would go on to improve a talent bereft Clippers team in the mid-1990s before getting fired and stiffed by Donald Sterling and having to sue him to collect.
1992-93: Peak DC Nets?
DC got rid of Fitch but Coleman’s reputation took a hit as well. The 1993 Complete Handbook of Pro Basketball summed up DC as follows: “He’s great. And knows it….Potential knucklehead who will be [new coach] Chuck Daly’s prime chore.” Yes, the Nets hired the anti-Fitch, Daly, who juggled huge characters in Detroit (Isiah, Rodman, Laimbeer, Aguirre) and with the 1992 U.S. Olympic Dream Team, to harmonize this talented bunch. DC was quite happy with the change: “[t]o me he acts more like one of the players than the coach. He’s kind of laid back. He cracks jokes and he’s pretty loose. He’s a relaxed kind of person.” Daly, on his end, seemed to recognize the Nets would rise and fall based on Coleman: “he has the talent to probably be in the top seven or eight players in the league. There isn’t anything he can’t do. He can run the floor, he handles the ball like a guard, he can shoot . . . But he’s got to play enough games to obtain star status. He’s got to play a lot of games successfully to get that kind of respect from players and the media during the course of the year.”
This left the Nets with the usual crew of DC, Petrovic, Bowie, and Morris and a big question as what Daly would do at point guard between the steadily (but slowly) improving Blaylock and Anderson, who the Nets had invested quite heavily in but had an up-and-down rookie season. Daly described the point guard decision to Sports Illustrated: “I didn’t hand Kenny the job. I just told him that everyone was starting with a clean slate, that I didn’t even want to know the whys and wherefores of what went on the year before. Everyone was going to earn his playing time in training camp.”
The Nets hastily traded an angry Blaylock “days before the start of the regular season in order to make it clear that this was Anderson’s team to run.” Choosing Anderson over Mookie was reasonable but the return, guard Rumeal Robinson, was not a great choice. Robinson was another young guard, who was stretched at a point guard. Here is how the two players stacked up in 1991-92:
Rumeal Robinson 1991-92: Age 25, 27.4 mpg, 13.0 ppg, .503 TS%, 2.7 rpg, 5.5 apg, 1.3 spg, 14.9 PER, .053 WS48, -0.3 BPM
Mookie Blaylock 1991-92: Age 24, 35.4 mpg, 13.8 ppg, .465 TS%, 3.7 rpg, 6.8 apg, 2.4 spg, 15.2 PER, .092 WS48, 1.0 BPM
The raw stats are pretty close but Mookie has a distinct advantage as a passer and defender, which is reflected in BPM as well. The parties seemed to acknowledge this fact because the Nets also slipped in the contract of Roy Hinson, which had $3.8 million and three years left even though his career effectively ended with a 1989 knee injury. The Nets saved money but left tons of on-court value on the table. Robinson had a few good moments in 1992-93 but was jettisoned early in 1993-94. Mookie quickly turned into an All-Star with the Hawks and put up these robust stats from 1992 to 1999: 518 games, 37.1 mpg, 18.4 ppg, .509 TS%, 4.6 rpg, 7.3 apg, 2.6 spg, 18.4 PER, .146 WS48, 4.8 BPM. The Nets were in a tough spot with an unhappy player but, trading Blaylock for Robinson was a missed opportunity to improve the team.
Regardless, the Nets had a pretty good team. They started out 4-7 and then kicked it into gear, rallying to 30-24 and went out and absolutely spanked the peak Pat Riley Knicks 102-76 at MSG. Unfortunately, the Knicks were not the nicest of teams and John Starks flagrantly fouled Anderson, causing Kenny to break his wrist and ended his season. Anderson had put up 17 ppg and 8.2 apg and was a huge loss but the Nets didn’t fold they rallied to 9-2 after the injury because Robinson briefly played out of his mind (16 ppg, .483 FG%, 8.3 apg). They even torched the peak Charles Barkley Suns in Phoenix by 31 points.
By March 24, 1993, the Nets were 39-26 and had outscored opponents by 3 points per game. They were on pace for about 50 wins at that time, which would be good for a four seed. Then more injuries hit. Petrovic sprained his knee and missed a month and the center position was so worn down that they had to resort to starting deep bencher Dwayne Schintzius. The Nets closed the year 4-12 and were the six seed, drawing that tough Cavs team again.
The Nets were heavy underdogs but took the series five games, thanks mostly to DC who put up incredible numbers: 45 mpg, 26.8 ppg, .532 FG%, .417 3FG%, 13.4 rpg, 4.6 apg, 1.2 spg, 2.6 bpg. He dominated a huge Cavs’ front court and, but for random bad injury luck, the Nets’ might’ve had won the series (round two would’ve been against the MJ Bulls, who swept the Cavs, so don’t get too excited).
Summer 1993: RIP Petro
Here was the state of the Nets’ starters as of the end of the 1992-93 season:
Kenny Anderson, age 22: 36.5 mpg, 16.9 ppg, 4.1 rpg, 8.2 apg, 16.6 PER, .106 WS48, 1.6 BPM
Drazen Petrovic, age 28: 38.0 mpg, 22.3 ppg, 2.7 rpg, 3.5 apg, 17.3 PER, .152 WS48, 1.8 BPM (pending free agent)
Chris Morris, age 27: 29.9 mpg, 14.1 ppg, 5.9 rpg, 1.4 apg, 17.8 PER, .151 WS48, 3.1 BPM
Derrick Coleman, age 25: 36.3 mpg, 20.7 ppg, 11.2 rpg, 3.6 apg, 21.2 PER, .165 WS48, 4.3 BPM
Sam Bowie, age 31: 26.5 mpg, 9.1 ppg, 7.0 rpg, 1.6 apg, 13.2 PER, .098 WS48, -0.4 BPM
The Nets had a borderline All-Star level backcourt and Coleman, whose advanced stats rated him at about a top 10 player in the NBA (he was 12th in BPM and 11th in VORP0 . While the Nets weren’t quite serious contenders, this line up was well-balanced and was a viable 50-win team if they navigated the transactions (they had two key free agents in Petro and Bowie) and player development challenges (Kenny and DC).
Petrovic was the real key free agent. His overall stats were good (not great) but his shooting gave the Nets spacing to let the offensive initiators work. His return to the Nets was far from certain. Petro wanted an extension before the end of the season and the Nets didn’t get that done. As early as December 1992, the New York Times was reporting that Drazen was upset that Jersey was taking a hard stance in contract negotiations and was considering leaving after the season.
A 2015 book called “Years of the Dragon,” reported that “Drazen had decided to return to Europe and his first choice was Panathinaikos, even if he had many more offers. He wanted to stay for one or two seasons in Greece and then return to the NBA in order to sign with the Celtics. It’s been said that he had a soft spot for teams which had the shamrock as their emblem, like Panathinaikos, Notre Dame and the Celtics.” Sadly, Petro died in early June 1993 car crash on the Autobahn in Germany. We can never know for sure but it is safe to assume, had he avoided tragedy, Drazen probably was not returning to the Nets.
GM Willis Reed then had to fill a big hole at shooting guard and improve the team in other areas. First, Reed traded the hustling Bowie (and a 1998 second rounder) to the Lakers for Benoit Benjamin, who was younger and healthier but was not a favorite of his coaches due to his effort or lack thereof. As for the shooting guard issue, Reed drafted Kansas shooter Rex Walters with the 16th pick in the draft and signed journeyman Kevin Edwards to start at shooting guard. Edwards was a solid all-around player but didn’t excel in any area. He had scored 13.9 ppg for Miami in 1992-93 but was benched for nearly the entire second half behind Harold Miner, which Edwards blamed on ownership “politics.”
So, the Nets took a flier on a shooting specialist and two replacement level starters. Hardly inspiring moves but the free agent market in those days was really thin (the only other starting level free agent two guard was Craig Ehlo) and the trade market was also quite thin. There did appear to be other options available. The Hornets traded disgruntled young star guard Kendall Gill but the Nets likely didn’t have the assets to land him. At center, Andrew Lang was available in free agency and was clearly a better option than Benjamin but the difference in value was not great. In short, Reed had limited options and the hope of a 50-win breakthrough seemed gone.
1993-94: The Nets Were Actually Pretty Good
The Nets seemed like major regression candidates without Drazen. Vegas set their over-under at 40.5 wins. Daly told reporters in the preseason that he didn’t know how he was going to build the team: “I can’t tell you who I’m going to start right now. Everything’s up in the air. I’m going to have to sleep on it.” He further noted that Petro’s loss was massive: “you don’t replace him. You just try to go on with your life…. Kevin Edwards is a different kind of ballplayer than Drazen, who basically liked to come off picks and catch and shoot. Kevin Edwards can put the ball on the floor and drive to the basket. He can also pull up and shoot the jumper.”
The Nets started off terribly, bottoming out at 4-10, after losing all four games of a West Coast trip. From there, the Nets slowly rallied towards .500, hitting 24-24 on February 17, 1994 and finishing out the season 21-13 for 45-37 record overall. Anderson had his best season as a pro (18.2 PER, 2.4 BPM) while DC maintained his same high level of play (21.4 PER, 4.3 BPM). Edwards, in keeping with his neutral skill set, had a BPM of exactly 0.0 but defended well. The Nets’ other shooting guard option, Ehlo, actually had a strong season for Atlanta (15.0 PER, 2.2 BPM).
The Nets drew the second seed Knicks in the playoffs and there was some outside hope that Jersey could beat the 57-win Patrick Ewing-led team because the Nets went 4-1 against the Knicks in the regular season. The Nets dropped the first two games in New York before winning Game 3 on last second free throws by Chris Morris. Jersey was eliminated when they dropped a close Game 4, where DC shot 5-15 but was 21-25 from the line. The Nets hung tough in a blistering defensive series but just couldn’t score enough to win (.378 eFG% as a team with an offensive rating of 95.9, compared to 107.2 in the regular season).
On paper, 1993-94 was the best season by the DC Nets. This squad had their best record (45-37) and best SRS (2.11). Yes, had the 1992-93 team not imploded with injuries, it would’ve have scored better. Either way, the Nets were a solid enough team with two bookend potential stars in Coleman and Anderson and not much else. The Nets shot poorly as a team (26th in FG% and 18th in 3FG%) but still were 13th in offense because they led the NBA in free throws made and attempted. An optimist might think that if the Nets could just improve the outside shooting, they might be good in 1994-95. Quickly, though, everything broke quite wrong.
First, Daly resigned as coach with a year left on his deal. Daly was 63 at the time and told the press that: “The bottom line is that after [coaching] 1,475 games at every level, I finally made the decision that it is time to leave the bench.” Daly didn’t complain about the roster or player discipline problems and attributed his decision solely to the coaching grind: “[c]learly it’s about me — nothing else. I want to make that perfectly clear. I can’t tell you how much I’ve learned, how much I enjoyed, not only being with the Nets — particularly the Nets.”
Al Harvin of The New York Times did note that it was a tough season for Daly: “[t]his has been a difficult season for Daly. His star shooting guard, Drazen Petrovic, was killed in an auto accident last June. Center Chris Dudley signed with Portland as a free agent. Terry Mills, a backup forward, signed with the Pistons. Derrick Coleman went public with his demands for a new contract. And then the Nets were eliminated by the Knicks, their cross-river rivals, in four games.”
So, the Nets went into the 1994 off-season with two very good players in DC and Anderson (both of whom were coming up on contract extension negotiations), the professional but average Edwards at shooting guard, Morris at small forward, the apathetic Benoit Benjamin at center, and the void left by losing a Hall of Fame coach. It was fair to say that Reed had a big summer ahead of him and he didn’t exactly nail it.
The Times had reported that Daly’s assistants, Brendan Suhr, Paul Silas, and Rick Carlisle would all be considered as his successor. Suhr worked with Daly forever but was considered a career assistant-type. Silas had head coaching experience and was highly regarded around the NBA. Carlisle was only 34 and though he’d end up being a great coach, he would not get a head job until 2001.
Silas seemed liked the natural choice, but Reed went off the grid and hired Butch Beard, who had no NBA head coaching experience (he had been an assistant with the Knicks and Nets from 1978 through 1989). Beard had been coaching at Howard University where he hadn’t been lighting the world on fire (he had a 45-67 record in four years and finished up 1993-94 at 10-17).
Harvey Araton summed up the risky hire of Beard: “You might say that Reed, criticized in recent years for being too much a company front man, is sticking his neck out, hiring an undistinguished college coach at a time when his team, and by extension his career, is at the crossroads. Reed chose Beard over Paul Silas because he believes there exists inside Beard a spark, and that all Beard has needed is for someone to strike the right coaching match. A long time ago, when Reed and Beard formed a combustible couple with the Knicks, Reed saw Beard close up. He never forgot the sight of raw pride burning.”
Beard’s raw burning pride wasn’t enough. Reed didn’t exactly help Beard in the transactions department. The Nets had the 14th pick in the draft and took raw big man Yinka Dare, when the team needed immediate help at shooting guard. The draft wasn’t super deep at that level but there were a number of good shooters on the board (Eric Piatkowski, Aaron McKie, and Wesley Person). None of the options would have saved the franchise but they all could’ve really helped, especially compared to the raw Dare. Instead, Reed signed Sean Higgins, who had washed out of the NBA in the early 1990s but later shot well in Europe. The Nets felt that Higgins would cover the lack of shooting and allow them to take a shot at a center with some theoretical upside. The plan wasn’t crazy but for two things: (1) Higgins still couldn’t get his shot off in the NBA and (2) Yinka had no discernible offensive skills. He only played three minutes as a rookie and took one shot, an airball, before a knee injury ended his season (and he wasn’t any better when healthy in 1995-96).
Reed didn’t make any major trades or signings and, instead, ran out the same line up, betting that Edwards and Morris would remain solid and Benjamin would continue to occupy space with his shear size.
1994-95: A Painful Year
The Nets started the season poorly, going 1-5 but rallied to 6-7. That was the closest they came to .500 the rest of the season. The Nets were beset with injuries and controversy. Sports Illustrated’s January 1995 article about Gen X immaturity in the NBA fingered the Nets as particularly problematic. Here are some excerpts:
DC: “The Nets’ 27-year-old, $7.5-million-a-year All-Star forward failed to show for a shootaround in December, citing car trouble, the NBA version of ‘the dog ate my homework.’ He also balked at the team’s new dress code requiring a player to wear a jacket and tie when traveling, and when the Nets threatened to fine him each time he violated the rule, Coleman smugly presented coach Butch Beard with a blank check…
“Coleman hasn’t minded being considered an attitude problem; in fact, he has seemed to revel in it, as when he defended teammate Anderson to a group of reporters after Anderson’s missed practice in December. A reporter suggested that as one of the Nets’ supposed leaders, Anderson had set a poor example, and Coleman replied, ‘Well, whoop-de-damn-do. I miss practice. Dwayne [Schintzius] misses practice. Chris [Morris] misses practice. It’s no big deal.’ We’re guessing that this is not the attitude the Nets had in mind when they named Coleman co-captain in November 1993. ‘My missing shootarounds and practices doesn’t make us lose games,’ he has said. ‘Some players are just practice players. They step on the court and don’t do ——. I come out and bust my butt every night.’ (On Sunday, though, Coleman did pledge a new commitment to his leadership role, ‘both on and off the court.’)”
Anderson: “Upset over being benched for the entire fourth quarter in a blowout loss to the New York Knicks the night before, Anderson, 24, didn’t show up for the Net practice on Dec. 28. The next day the $3.5-million-per-year All-Star guard blithely dismissed the incident as ‘water under the bridge.’”
Morris: “Perhaps the single most ridiculous act of defiance this season was perpetrated by Chris Morris. The seventh-year Net forward took the floor for a practice shoot-around one morning in December with his shoelaces undone. Then he refused Beard’s order to tie them. Morris’s explanation: ‘I wasn’t planning on doing much running.’ Beard fined him, not so much because he cared about the state of Morris’s shoelaces, but because it wasn’t the first time Morris had shown up with them untied, and Beard felt he had to remind his team that he was in charge. Morris, too, has asked to be traded, saying that Beard’s offense is too half-court-oriented. Perhaps Beard would have the Nets run more if he could be sure all his players had their shoelaces tied.”
Rex Walters summed up the state of the Nets: “Let’s see, we’ve got one millionaire who won’t tie a 10-cent pair of shoelaces when the coach tells him to, an even richer millionaire who complains because he doesn’t want to wear a tie on a plane, a couple of players who say they want to be traded every other day and a couple more who only seem to come to practice when they feel like it. If you’re writing about us, I hope your name is Sigmund Freud, because this is the craziest group of guys you’re going to find.”
The Nets sounded like they were in total chaos but was that the cause of all the problems? Morris’ shoelace gambit was incredibly stupid, but he was correct that the offense had declined from 13th to 23rd and the slower pace (dropping from 11th to 18th) didn’t help. Additionally, Edwards missed nearly the entire season and Walters and Higgins struggled to replace his modest contributions. DC missed 26 games with injuries and, for the first time, his numbers regressed (19.0 PER, .117 WS48, 1.5 BPM) when he did play. Anderson played to about the same level of effectiveness but did not improve. The Nets finished 30-52 and missed a very attainable eighth seed (a bad Boston team locked in that right by going 35-47 with a decline phase Dominique Wilkins as its best player).
In sum, Beard ran an offense that didn’t maximize opportunities and couldn’t corral his stars. DC was injured and declined and Reed whiffed in the draft and at shooting guard. While the ruckus around DC’s behavior may have been a bit overstated as the cause of the bad season, it’s fair to say there was plenty of blame to go around.
1995-96: End of the DC/Kenny Era
This debacle of a season basically ended the DC Era in Jersey. That summer, DC demanded a trade, because he didn’t believe management was committed to winning. Sports Illustrated interviewed DC in October 1995 about the trade demand and noted that the demand gave “[a] lot of NBA fans…a good chuckle” as DC hadn’t shown himself to be the hardest worker. DC’s interview had some interesting highlights:
On why he wanted a trade:
“It seems like everyone around us is getting better, but we’re not. I don’t see us improving. I just want to go somewhere and compete for a championship.”
“I was asked about draft picks…and I voiced my opinion. But when it came down to making the draft pick, it was like, ‘Forget what Derrick says.’ Basically, I wasn’t involved in what was going on.”
On his effort level:
“I come to practice, but the only thing that gets me is when we play back-to-back games and I play 40 minutes each night. There’s no way I can come to practice the next morning and put out. I have to give my body time to regenerate. I never had that problem when Chuck Daly was here, because he would tell me, ‘You played a lot of minutes. Relax yourself.’”
On Whoop-dee-damn-do:
“I don’t wish I hadn’t said it but I probably should have phrased it a different way.”
On the dress code thing:
“That’s another thing that got blown all out of proportion. I just couldn’t see putting on a suit and tie at two o’clock in the morning to go to a hotel. Home games? Fine. No problem. But if I’m going from an arena to a bus to a plane, or from a plane to a bus to a hotel every night, I don’t see it. I just felt like I was speaking up for everyone. No one wants to wear a suit and tie anymore, not flying late at night.”
His only regret about his behavior was refusing Fitch’s order to re-enter a game:
“That’s probably the one thing I would take back, because I let my team down that day. I think at the time we were losing, got back in the game, and I was rolling. I hit like five or six in a row. I was in rhythm, playing good, and the game was on the line. [Fitch] took me out and I was frustrated. I lost my cool when he tried to send me back in. It was more a rebellion against him, and I told my teammates I let them down.”
Coleman’s responses were mostly reasonable and thoughtful. Management had done a very poor job improving the team in the summer of 1994 (DC seemed to imply that he was particularly unhappy about the Dare/Higgins plan that crapped out so badly). Some of DC’s controversies regarding a dress code, practice, and needing rest were overblown or wouldn’t be an issue today. The two facts that DC didn’t acknowledge were that he wasn’t always in game shape and that his effort set the tone for the team, something that Beard understood. This was the precise reason Beard tried to get buy-in from DC to help create that atmosphere. Coleman just wasn’t wired to be that kind of player.
DC reported to 1995 training camp way overweight and the team also found he had an irregular heartbeat. He was put on the injury list with a plan to come off shortly. Coleman’s trade value was tenuous, but Reed traded him a few weeks later to Philadelphia for Shawn Bradley. Coleman missed virtually the entire season and came back as a good player but never the upper-tier player he was for Daly. Here are his advanced stats for the Nets versus his post-Jersey career:
DC in NJ: 19.8 PER, .138 WS48, 2.6 BPM
DC post-NJ: 16.3 PER, .101 WS48, 0.3 BPM
Coleman’s reputation post-New Jersey was not as bad. Larry Brown liked him in Philly enough to reacquire him twice more. It definitely seemed that once DC wasn’t among the highest paid in the NBA, his persona became less of an issue to the press, with the notable exception of his last year in Charlotte in 2000-01.
As for Anderson, the Nets offered him a six-year $40 million extension in training camp and he refused it. This guaranteed he’d be traded because the Nets couldn’t risk losing him without compensation after the season. Kenny was traded for Kendall Gill, who gave the Nets several good years. Anderson ended up getting a better offer in free agency that summer (seven years and $50 million from the Blazers). Like DC, Anderson was pretty good after leaving the Nets but never quite All-Star level again:
Anderson in NJ: 17.6 PER, .115 WS48, 2.2 BPM
Anderson post-NJ: 15.5 PER, .117 WS48, 0.7 BPM
Without DC and Anderson, the Nets went 30-52 in 1995-96 (the Nets were 15-21 when they traded Kenny and finished up 15-31 without him). The Nets fired Beard and ownership gave the keys to the entire kingdom to John Calipari for a rebuild but that’s a whole other story.
Summing Up The DC/Kenny Era
After revisiting the early 1990s in-depth, I was struck with the following conclusions:
-The Nets, if everything had worked out better (no major injuries at bad times and kept Petro), could’ve been a 50-win team with second round potential but the Bulls and Knicks were better and made a conference finals run pretty remote. Making the second round a time or two isn’t earth shattering but would’ve been a nice run for a franchise that had only won a single series since coming to the NBA.
-Chuck Daly was an incredible coach. He was able to hold together and win with a team that was always teetering under Fitch and Beard. While Daly is known most for his years on Detroit and the Dream Team, it’s clear that his presence was vital to getting the consistent respect and effort of his stars. By all accounts, Beard was a smart and tough guy, but he struggled getting anywhere near the results from the same players. It is no coincidence that Anderson, DC, and even Morris, played their best ball for Chuck.
-Petro was not coming back in 1993. The Nets screwed the pooch letting him get to free agency and, had he survived, it was clear he was irked enough to consider his options.
-Reed had a very mixed record as a GM. He found a number of good players in the bargain bin: Petrovic, Terry Mills, Armen Gilliam, David Wesley, Chris Childs, and PJ Brown. This is juxtaposed with some big misses on drafts/signings: Tate George, Sean Higgins, and Yinka Dare. Reed also made a mistake betting on Beard, when it seemed the most important skill set a new coach needed was to get DC to try. It’s not clear that Silas would be that guy, but he was more likely to be than Beard, who had no track record with Coleman.
-With hindsight being 20/20, the optimal moves would’ve been to keep Mookie and draft Mutombo. That didn’t happen because Kenny was such an intriguing prospect but a core of Blaylock, Petro, Morris, DC, and Mutombo would’ve competed for the three seed for a few years, assuming Daly was involved as coach.
-DC is still a complicated figure. He was a top ten player for about two years and then never that good again. In addition, Coleman consistently raised his game for the playoffs. In the 2002 Basketball Prospectus, John Hollinger looked at players who performed better in the playoffs and found that DC improved by 5.9% in the playoffs, an atypically large increase considering most players are worse in the harder conditions. Some of the press coverage around DC was silly.
Most players don’t like practice and are cocky but it’s clear that DC wasn’t always in shape or giving best efforts after 1994. But we finally got Daly’s perspective on DC several years later. DC had signed a big contract with Charlotte in 1999. He was solid his first two years but came into the 2000-01 season out-of-shape. His coach Paul Silas (yes, the same guy we discussed above), benched DC in defiance of management because the team was playing so much better without him (Charlotte was 22-9 and then went 5-16 after his return). Jeffrey Denberg of ESPN wrote about the situation and got this very revealing quote from Daly about DC: “[w]hat most people don’t understand is that Derrick doesn’t like to play basketball. He simply does not enjoy the game.”
In other words, Coleman just didn’t have the consistent drive of mono-focused stars like Jordan, Kobe, and Garnett. Denberg’s article framed this revelation as showing that DC was a bad person but that misses the point. Coleman is perfectly decent human, he has dedicated himself to charity since retiring, but it is true that he didn’t get every ounce out of his talent. Either way, I loved watching him play.