{"id":15739,"date":"2025-10-25T01:24:23","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T01:24:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/15739\/"},"modified":"2025-10-25T01:24:23","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T01:24:23","slug":"nets-are-in-a-similar-situation-to-team-he-took-over-in-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/15739\/","title":{"rendered":"Nets are in a ‘similar’ situation to team he took over in 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kenny Atkinson knows a thing or two about what the present-day Nets<\/a> are going through.<\/p>\n

Back in 2016, Atkinson took over as head coach of a rebuilding Brooklyn team that wasn\u2019t too far removed from the days of Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Joe Johnson.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just threw a bunch of guys out there, and they made a ton of mistakes, and we didn\u2019t win hardly any games,\u201d Atkinson, now the head coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers, said before facing the Nets at Barclays Center on Friday night.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think of Joe Harris. Joe Harris was, like, a disaster the first year. Like, \u2018Can this guy play in the league?\u2019 There were a bunch of guys in that bucket. We had the luxury of being able to throw them out there, though. There\u2019s no better development road than that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Nets went 20-62 during that 2016-17 season, but the growing pains turned out to be necessary for a young core that included Harris, Caris LeVert and Spencer Dinwiddie.<\/p>\n

Brooklyn made the playoffs by the third season of Atkinson\u2019s tenure.<\/p>\n

Atkinson believes today\u2019s Nets, in their second season under head coach Jordi Fern\u00e1ndez, are in a comparable situation.<\/p>\n

At June\u2019s NBA draft, the Nets became the first team in league history to make five first-round picks \u2014 Egor Demin<\/a>, Ben Saraf, Nolan Traore, Drake Powell and Danny Wolf \u2014 and they kept all five players.<\/p>\n

The Nets have not made the playoffs since 2022-23, which is the season they parted with Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant before the trade deadline.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis seems similar here, where they\u2019re like, \u2018OK, the best way to do this is to get these guys in an NBA game and take their lumps, and they\u2019ll learn.\u2019 And then year two they\u2019ll get a little better, and year three you hope you\u2019re in the playoff hunt,\u201d Atkinson said. \u201cI would think that\u2019s the road map.\u201d<\/p>\n

INJURY UPDATES<\/p>\n

The Barclays Center debuts of Powell and Wolf will have to wait.<\/p>\n

Both missed Friday night\u2019s home opener due to ankle sprains, with Jordi Fern\u00e1ndez describing them as day-to-day.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not concerned, but day-to-day,\u201d Fern\u00e1ndez said.<\/p>\n

Asked what grade of sprains Powell and Wolf are dealing with, Fern\u00e1ndez replied, \u201cWe don\u2019t grade.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wolf also missed the Nets\u2019 season-opening loss in Charlotte with a left ankle sprain, while Powell sprained his right ankle during the fourth quarter of that game after scoring two points in seven minutes.<\/p>\n

GAMBLING SCANDAL<\/p>\n

Thursday\u2019s arrests of Chauncey Billups, Terry Rozier<\/a> and Damon Jones due to gambling-related allegations were a talking point during both coaches\u2019 pregame press conferences at Barclays Center.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s obviously not the news you want to hear,\u201d Fern\u00e1ndez said of the scandal. \u201cI think the NBA does a great job every year with doing the gambling meeting and the rules and so and so forth, because we deal with young players. I think the league followed the proper steps. We support it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Billups, the Portland Trail Blazers\u2019 head coach, and Rozier, a guard for the Miami Heat, were both placed on immediate leave by their teams.<\/p>\n

Jones, a former player and coach, is not currently employed by an NBA team.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just gonna stay away from that and not comment on it,\u201d Atkinson said. \u201cIt\u2019s not my area of expertise.\u201d<\/p>\n

HOF BOUND<\/p>\n

Mr. Whammy is headed to the Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n

The Nets mega-fan, whose real name is Bruce Reznick, and his late wife Judy Reznick, who died in 2023, will be added next year to the James F. Goldstein SuperFan Gallery at the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass.<\/p>\n

Mr. Whammy, 89, has been a Nets season ticket holder for nearly three decades, and his hand-written signs and taunts to opposing free-throw shooters are a staple at Barclays Center.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kenny Atkinson knows a thing or two about what the present-day Nets are going through. Back in 2016,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15740,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,4570,11431,21,4475,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-15739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-jordi-fernandez","tag-kenny-atkinson","tag-nba","tag-nets","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}