Nets General Manager Billy King met with the media yesterday and discussed all things involving the Nets and the outlook for this season. The Nets, still pick-less for what feels like the next 239 years have shredded payroll this offseason and are looking to move towards the future after spending millions in the luxury tax on big contracts, only to get out of the first round of the playoffs one time in his five years as GM.
I take a look at King’s comments from his media day and speak on how a Nets fan – much like myself – would feel about it going into the 2015-16 season.
“We are moving forward and not looking backwards and dwelling on that,” King said. We were able to get some young talent, and athletic, and reduce our payroll from a $90 million taxpayer to two years later being zero.”
Well that’s good, I guess, considering Billy King is the exact reason why the Nets owed $90 million in luxury tax, but congrats you spent all that money for one playoff series win, he should give himself a raise.
King on Deron Williams:
“I’m happy for Deron. I think he’s getting a fresh start in Dallas so I’m happy for him. Unfortunately it didn’t work out here to the best of all our likings, but I wish him the best. And I do sincerely mean that. When I spoke to him on the phone afterwards, I said I’m happy for yourself and your family that now you’re in a place where you’re around your family and now basketball success will come with you. For us it’s the same, it’s a new start for us as well, and I think both parties have a chance to start fresh.”
On Brook Lopez and his role on the team:
“That’s one thing at the end of the season when I met with Brook, I said, ‘We definitely want you back, but part of that we want you back is we want you to be more of a leader. We want you to be more vocal. You don’t have to be rah-rah and jumping around waving towels. But I need you to push this group and help guide it where you want it to go.’ I said, ‘You’ve been here for a long time, but now, if you’re going to come back, you’ve got to put your stamp on it a little bit.’ And I think he’s accepted that. He was in Vegas when we got the group together. He’s been here since early September, he’s been around, pretty much all summer, stopping in. So I think he is taking ownership to it.”
I wonder if Billy King will be saying the same thing about Lopez when the trade deadline approaches, considering he’s tried trading Lopez on 7 different occasions.
On Rookie Chris McCullough and if he’ll play this season:
“He’s on the court, he’s doing some stuff, rehabbing. We’ll give a timetable on exactly where we think he’ll be after [the first] preseason game. We’ll sit down with him and his agent and everybody and really just walk through it. I have an idea in my mind of what we want to do with him, but I want to sit down with him and with his agent and explain it. He has a pretty good understanding and after that meeting on the 5th, we’ll give a complete timetable. It won’t be, ‘This will be when he’s back on the court,’ because the goal is ? he’s a young kid. So we don’t want to just rush him back onto the court just to get him back out there. He has a long career ahead of him, so we want to get him to the point where he’s strong in both legs, and when he comes back he’s ready to be playing for a long time. Not get him back on the court and have a setback.”
On The Celtics owning the Nets Future (2016 First Round Pick:)
“We are not going to jeopardize the future going forward to protect this pick. There’s nothing we can do about it at this point in time. We can’t change it, so we don’t want to spend money and ruin cap space so we don’t give up a good pick to somebody in the future. I think we’ve got to make the decision, which we’ve done the last couple of years, what’s best for the future going forward. Not, well we’ve got to do this because we may give Boston a good pick. We have no control over that, whether it’s the 10th pick or if it’s the 20th pick or 15. It’s done.”
No, Billy you just messed up with that one, badly.
