Get Busy, Kiki

Kiki Vandeweghe is the new general manager of the Nets, as expected.

The Nets were happy with him and Kiki with them so it was an inevitable marriage. Now Vandeweghe must work on repairing this team.

He’s already started as he was instrumental in the Jason Kidd-to-Dallas trade for Devin Harris, et al. But as Vandeweghe said in his opening remarks on the conference call announcing his new contract and general manager’s title, “We’ve still go a lot of work to do, which I’m excited about. I’m looking forward to getting right at it.”

Get busy, Kiki. There is plenty of work to be done to get this 34-48 team back to where it was a few years ago.

Of course, it doesn’t all fall on Vandeweghe. Rod Thorn is the president still, but in Vandeweghe he has a second in command that can help seek out deals the way Ed Stefanski did. Vandeweghe is a creative guy and joked that Rod is “very nice to put up with some of my crazy ideas.”

The Nets need creativity and aggressiveness and boldness to improve this team.

Vandeweghe said the Nets need to improve on the interior and with their shooting, which we already knew. He also gave the company line that the Nets have a good core with Vince Carter, Richard Jefferson and Harris.

Thorn and Lawrence Frank also said publicly they would have no problem returning the same core. But they have to say that even though the entire league knows Jefferson is on the block first and foremost. It’s also a very good assumption that Vandeweghe has been peddling Jefferson and mentioned his name a few times on his trip overseas to scout the European championships.

“I think all of us want to end up a team that can compete at a championship level,” Vandeweghe said.

Guess what? They won’t be with this group as constituted so they have to look elsewhere, which they are doing.

The next big thing should be the Lottery, which is when the Nets know whether they’ve moved up or back in the draft. That should determine what they will do because teams will come calling after everyone knows where everyone is picking and one team falls in love with a player that’s higher than they select. The Nets should be one of the most active teams around the draft.

“I guarantee you we’ll have calls,” Vandeweghe said. “Having two picks in the first round, I think you have some very good players potentially in this draft. You never know until a couple of years down the road, but I do like this draft. Our picks will be valuable. You’ll definitely get calls on them.

“There are a lot of things you can do. You view your draft picks as assets. You view them different ways, along with cap space, along with good young players, on good contracts - these are all assets you use to improve your team whether you use them in trades or to pick one of the good young players that are going to come into the league. Those are decisions that will be made as we get closer to the draft. There’s still a lot of time.”

There was plenty of talk about the young players and how the Nets have to do a better job of developing them as Thorn said. Probably seeing what the Sixers did and the Hawks did in the playoffs drummed that point home more.

“We like the guys we have, we like our free agents and we’d like to be able to keep them,” Vandeweghe said. “I think that with the Jason Kidd trade, as far as getting a little bit younger, adding some draft picks, we definitely needed to get a little bit younger and want to do that. The way the league is structured now you’ve got so many young players you’ve got to focus on improving on the guys you got. That’s going to be a major focus this summer investing in our assets and getting a great developmental program going. We had a pretty good one when I was with Dallas and pretty good one in Denver. Hopefully I can bring a little bit of that to the Nets. We want to really invest in the guys we have, improve internally, but also you’re always looking for different ways to improve your team and whether it’s via a trade or free agent. We’re obviously going to focus on that in the summer.”

When asked about those programs, here was Vandeweghe’s answer:

“The basic idea is what you try to create is a culture of getting better. You want the players to improve and get excited about it. The first thing they need to do is think about basketball and think about ways they can improve themselves. I go back to the example of Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan one of the greatest basketball players ever, maybe the greatest ever, I don’t know, but among those. Every year he added something.

“The league is getting younger every single year. You’ve got a lot of young players that have only scratched the surface of their potential. With some of the salary cap restrictions, it’s an environment where you have to foster improvement. You have to foster the players getting better, whether it’s bringing in ex-players to work with the guys, really setting up a real system for them over the summer to invest in themselves to get better. They’ve got to want to do that, create an environment to do that.

“We’ve got some great coaches, some great strength and conditioning people. You’ve got to provide an environment where players want to be there every day in the summer, want to improve. I harken back to the Michael Jordans and Magic Johnsons. I’ll never forget, Magic Johnson used to come every single day. Every year he would come back and work on his game. I remember a young player asking him, ‘Geez, you’re so good and you make all this money, why do you do it?’ He goes, ‘I’m an every-day player. I come to play every single day. I prove myself every day.’ That’s the type of environment you want to create.”

Oh, and Vandeweghe said he doesn’t think he’ll be on the stage representing the Nets in the May 20 Lottery, but didn’t say who would be.

Comments

[Steve B]

Does this mean Thomas Barrise will get fired?

[Adam.y]

Congrat's Kiki you deserve it for pulling off the clearly one sided trade for Devin.

Its also great to hear that he plans on making this team better and not taking it a step backwards into complete rebuilding mode.

[newark hawk]

larry frank should be on the stage at the secaucus draft lottery ... after all, he put us there

[newark hawk]

pat sullivan, tom barrise, brian hill and larry frank ... now there's a great group of hall of famers for you ... what nba player wouldn't want to learn from those guys ... nba legends, all four of them

[newark hawk]

larry frank should represent the nets at the draft lottery because he has to be the luckiest guy in the world ... i mean he's still the head coach of the nets, isn't he?

[Blessen Varghese]

rock bottom...we're there right now...hopefully kiki can do us rite and bring us bak as a championship level team in 2 to 4 years

[Scott Lipsky]

Sean Williams, Dasagna Diop, Nenad Krstic, Josh Boone, Stromile Swift, Boki Nachbar. Who's missing? Jason Collins, Jamaal Magloire, Malik Allen. LFrank now has six useful big men-two bona-fide shotblockers, two low-post scorers and decent rebounders, a high flyer, and a versatile guy who can shoot and run the floor. The older, boring guys who bring nothing to the table are gone. If he can't finally figure out how to hammer out a consistent rotation without constantly ticking off half of his reserves by benching them for three weeks at a time without offering an explanation (How many times have we heard, "It's a process, we're learning about each other, we're trying to see what fits, it's not a knock on them, etc.etc."?), he's gone. WAY too much talent on this team to not sniff .500. Seriously. I'd go much further into detail if it wasn't 4am.