Earlier today, Nets Are Scorching published an article on the current divide in the Nets’ locker room:
“After the Pacers game Friday, the Nets’ defacto leader Devin Harris mentioned the one word you don’t want to hear about your team. Divided. “We are a little divided as a team right now,” Devin said, he then added, “and looking at the product on the court, I tend to agree. I mean, you had CDR’s tweets about the team being soft, Terrence Williams’ tweets, and then Rafer yelling at his teammates on the bench in Indiana (still don’t know what that is about). It only makes sense that the defense is starting to suffer now that this stuff is coming out, you need to be able to trust your teammates on that end of the court, and they nobody on the Nets seems to trust anybody else.
Why is this division there? When Devin was asked, this is what he said:
“There are bunches. You see younger guys, older guys…You see guys in their comfort zone right now. We need guys to step out of their comfort zone and pull together.”
Taking it a step further, I think that the two factions within the Nets. All you have to do is look at everyone’s contracts to see what the two factions are. You have guys who are a part of the future and guys who are just playing this year out. The way this team is built is unique, before the season started, everyone in the front office admitted that this was a throw-away year (not to this extent), and the way the roster was built reflected that. The Nets have 9 out of their 15 players in the final year of their contract (Sean Williams’ option wasn’t picked up, and Boone probably won’t be getting a qualifying offer). Usually, you have a few guys in the final year of their contract, but 6o% of the team? That’s almost unheard of.”
Though the two factions makes complete sense, I think the most fascinating part about this whole thing is that professional sports players are consistently airing their dirty laundry on Twitter. This is definitely an unexpected bonus, and I may have to start following all NBA players with Twitter accounts and take what they say for any (gentlemen’s, of course) bets or fantasy activity I have…
And, hot off the presses, is it all turning around? The latest from CDRs Twitter (~ 40 minutes before this post was published - gotta love real time search).
“Just had a great team dinner. Everybody kind of opened up. We all laughed & kicked it w/each other for the first time. I think this is big.”
http://twitter.com/CDOUGLASROBERTS
