Nets in Newark: Pro Basketball's Last Stand in New Jersey

The Nets open the season against the Detroit Pistons Wednesday night at the Prudential Center in Newark, which means two good things: there is still pro basketball in New Jersey and it isn't being played at the Meadowlands.

At long last, fans in The Oranges, Maplewood, Millburn and Summit have been liberated from the horrible drive to the Meadowlands and the exorbitant parking fee, and can actually take public transportation to the game and back home.

But this turn of good fortune comes with a steep price: The Nets are a lame duck franchise, scheduled to move to Brooklyn in 2012 and, following a truly horrendous 12-70 season, the team doesn't look to be all that much better this year.

True, that could change in an instant if Denver's unhappy superstar small forward Carmelo Anthony joins the team, a trade new general manager Billy King is desperately trying to pull off.  But this blockbuster move is contingent on Denver's willingness to accept the Nets trade bait (basically anyone on the roster other than center Brook Lopez), which appears unlikely, and, despite being smitten with the allure of New York, Anthony's willingness to play with a crappy team in Newark for two (or three) seasons before moving to Brooklyn.

And yes, the Nets look  like they're really going to be bad once again.  Probably not 12-70 bad, but certainly likely to be in serious contention for the league's worst record.

How bad, exactly? Let us count the ways.

The "cornerstones" of  the franchise are supposedly Lopez and point guard Devin Harris. The seven-foot tall, 22-year old Lopez undoubtedly is skilled at his position after just two years in the league, and averaged an impressive 18.8 points and 8.6 rebounds per game last year. But he's also been erratic and unreliable, and, having played only for  lousy teams, he's never had to prove himself in very many meaningful games where the pressure was really on.

Harris is probably the most overrated player on the team. He's been touted as an elite point guard, but he isn't. The 27-year old is injury-prone, a sub-par defender, streaky and doesn't seem to be much of a leader. Yes, he's very quick and when he's healthy can usually get by his defender, but that trait, shared by many other young point guards, doesn't compensate for  decision-making and shooting skills that are merely average, at best.

To make matters worse, Harris had a troubled history with the Nets new coach, Avery Johnson, when they were both at Dallas several years ago. They both claim it's all in the past, but Johnson isn't known for being the best people person in the league and a coach and a point guard who are not on the same page spell trouble.

After that, it only gets worse.

The teams' flamboyant new owner, Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, attracted media attention over the summer by flying out to Ohio to personally woo LeBron James, but since the Nets had about as much chance of signing James as Barack Obama has of being praised by Rush Limbaugh, the effort was more of a publicity stunt than anything else.

In fact, the Nets didn't attract any of the top free agents, and had to settle for the likes of Travis Outlaw and Troy Murphy, run-of-the-mill players who will start at small and power forward, respectively.

But at least Outlaw and Murphy have proven they can be effective, if unspectacular, NBA starters. The contenders for the shooting guard position, second year man, the athletic but unfocused Terrence Williams and Anthony Morrow, who wasn't exactly a star at Golden State, have not. And neither player has played particularly well in the pre-season.

Plus the bench is paper-thin, the only potential bright spot being Derrick Favors, the 19-year old prodigy from Georgia Tech who was the third player taken in the draft. Favors is big, strong and athletic, but very, very raw and could just as easily be a Kwame Brown-type bust as a Kevin Garnett-type superstar.

So while it's unlikely the Nets will be competitive for a playoff spot, they will be playing many teams they at least have a chance of beating, some teams who have All-Star players worth watching and a few teams who are very good, like Miami, Boston, Orlando and the Los Angeles Lakers, who will be worth watching for the sheer pleasure of seeing how the game can and should be played.

So yes, if you enjoy watching professional basketball, take advantage of having a team in Newark, because they won't be there for long.