The Nets Need a Fifth Player To Step Up, and It Isn’t Collins
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

Maybe this was the moment of clarity Nets coach Lawrence Frank needed.
Perhaps he needed an embarrassment like Tuesday, and a recovery like Wednesday, to see that the way the Nets have won in the past is not going to work in the future. I hope so, because in what has been a disturbingly ugly start to the Nets’ season, that’s the one silver lining I can find.
For those of you who haven’t been following developments across the Hudson, let me clue you in. New Jersey came into this season hoping to join the ranks of the Eastern Conference’s elite, and most of the experts expected them to cruise to the Atlantic Division crown. Even the few cynics (ahem) thought Jersey would be a fringe playoff team at worst. So imagine our surprise when the Nets opened the year at 5–9. It wasn’t even a good 5–9. They lost home games to Portland, Charlotte, and Miami, who according to the “predictor” rankings of USA Today computer whiz, Jeff Sagarin, have been the three worst teams in the NBA so far. The Nets lost again to Portland and Miami on the road, got swept by another bad team (Seattle), and would have lost to Washington if not for the craziest bounce off a rim any ball has taken this season. Basically, they’ve been a lottery team.
Fortunately, New Jersey gets a mulligan since the rest of the Eastern Conference has been equally pathetic. After holding off Boston 106–103 on Wednesday, the Nets miraculously have found themselves in first place in the Titanic Division despite being three games underwater at 6–9.
But don’t let the “first-place” moniker fool you — the team has serious problems that need fixing. The offense and the defense each have been subpar. Despite playing a relatively weak schedule, the Nets rank only 17th out of 30 teams in both Offensive and Defensive Efficiency (my measures of how many points a team scores and allows per 100 possessions).
It may surprise some people that a team with names like Kidd, Jefferson, Carter, and Krstic ranks below par in the offensive categories, but this is nothing new for the Nets. They’ve been a subpar offensive team for several years, mostly because of the complete lack of production from the bench.
But the decline in defense is a new one. Since Jason Kidd came to New Jersey, the Nets have been one of the league’s best defensive teams every season. This year they haven’t been, and it’s perhaps a reflection on the changing nature of the league. With teams playing smaller and faster, the Nets are playing the same big lineup they’ve always employed — albeit with an older, slower backcourt and a creaky-kneed center.
Even if the defense improves from here, it’s hard to imagine it achieving the same lofty levels of previous seasons, simply because at 33, Kidd can’t be expected to be a shut-down defender, and Jason Collins hasn’t been an allleague caliber defender since his knees started giving him trouble at the start of last season.
That, in turn, points to another problem, and an eventual solution. If Collins isn’t going to be an out-of-this-world defender, what exactly is he bringing to the table? His offensive production has always been meager, but in the past two seasons it’s become absolutely horrific. This season he’s averaging 25 minutes per game and scoring only 3.3 points, putting an immense burden on the other four starters to produce offense.
Most players of this ilk will at least produce extra possessions by crashing the offensive boards — since that’s their only shot at touches — but Collins doesn’t do that either. The Nets have once again found themselves one of the league’s worst offensive rebounding teams, and a major reason is because their starting center hardly ever earns them second shots. Collins’s Rebound Rate is well below average for an NBA frontcourt player, which is glaring in light of the fact it’s the only way he can contribute offensively.
His lack of production, and its continuing decline, becomes clearer by looking at his Player Efficiency Rating (PER, my per-minute rating of a player’s statistical effectiveness). From Collins’s rookie year until 2004–05, his PER hovered between 8 and 10. For most players this is unacceptable — the league average is 15 — but you can live with it from an elite defensive player; San Antonio’s Bruce Bowen, for example, annually rates in this range.
But the past two years, he’s fallen off a cliff. Last year Collins’s PER was 5.5; this year it’s 4.2 That’s simply untenable. There’s almost no way he can create enough stops at the defensive end to make up for his complete lack of production offensively and on the boards. His lack of production has been a major reason the Nets rate so low in Offensive Efficiency every year; factor in that he’s lost a step defensively, and the need for replacement becomes obvious.
And therein lies the solution. Because the difference between the embarrassing home loss to Charlotte on Tuesday and the encouraging road win in Boston on Wednesday was that Collins played 36 minutes against the Bobcats and 11 against the Celtics. In a related story, the Nets scored 14 more points in Boston. Rookie Hassan Adams came off the bench to score 16 points and grab eight rebounds — four offensive — in 22 minutes, allowing the Nets to storm back from a 14-point deficit and steal the win. Anyone remember the last time Collins finished a game with 16 and 8? Stanford, maybe?
The point here isn’t that Adams is some kind of savior. Actually, I think the league will adjust to him quickly once the scouting report gets around that he can’t shoot. The point is that the Nets need the fifth man on the court to give them something — anything — so the efforts of Carter, Kidd, Jefferson, and Krstic aren’t wasted.
It might be Adams on one night, Marcus Williams on another, and Eddie House (who should be back in action soon) on a third. But in a league where the trend has been to play smaller, it’s become increasingly evident that the Nets’ use of two 7-footers in the frontcourt borders on archaic — particularly when one of them is playing such impact-free minutes.
So if you want to see the glass as half full with the Nets’ sluggish start, perhaps it’s the thing that will force Lawrence Frank’s hand. It’s not a decision to be taken lightly, because Collins has done this team’s dirty work for half a decade and not received nearly enough credit for it. But with his output more miniscule than ever and the game increasingly moving away from his style of play, the time for a change is here.