By BRIAN MAHONEY
Associated Press
NEW YORK — Coach of the month in November, out of a job by New Year’s.
The Brooklyn Nets have elevated expectations this season, and a .500 record wasn’t good enough. Coach Avery Johnson was fired Thursday, his team having lost 10 of 13 games after a strong start to its first season in Brooklyn.
“We don’t have the same fire now than we did when we were 11-4,” general manager Billy King said at a news conference in East Rutherford, N.J. “I tried to talk to Avery about it and we just can’t figure it out. The same pattern kept on happening.”
Assistant P.J. Carlesimo will coach the Nets on an interim basis, starting today against Charlotte. King said the Nets might reach out to other candidates, but for now the job was Carlesimo’s. The GM wouldn’t comment on a report that the team planned to get in touch with former Lakers coach Phil Jackson.
King said the decision to dismiss Johnson was made by ownership after a phone discussion Thursday morning. Owner Mikhail Prokhorov had expressed faith in Johnson before the season.
“With the direction we were going we felt we had to make a change,” King said.
Johnson was in the final year of a three-year, $12 million contract.
“It’s a really disappointing day for me and my family. It’s my wife’s birthday. It’s not a great birthday gift,” Johnson said. “I didn’t see this coming. But this is ownership’s decision. It’s part of the business. Fair or unfair, it’s time for a new voice and hopefully they’ll get back on track.”
The Nets have fallen well behind the first-place New York Knicks, the team they so badly want to compete with in their new home. But after beating the Knicks in their first meeting Nov. 26, probably the high point of Johnson’s tenure, the Nets went 5-10 and frustrations have been mounting.
“Our goal is to get to the conference finals,” King said. “We started out good and then we stumbled. We have to get back to playing winning basketball. It’s the entire team. It’s not like golf, where Tiger Woods can blame the caddie. It takes five guys on the court and they’re all struggling. We have to figure out the ways to get back to winning. I don’t know what happened. I’m not sure. But unfortunately, it did happen.”
The Nets were embarrassed by Boston on national TV on Christmas, then were routed by Milwaukee 108-93 on Wednesday night for their fifth loss in six games.
Star guard Deron Williams recently complained about Johnson’s offense, and Nets CEO Brett Yormark took to Twitter after the loss to Celtics to voice his displeasure with the performance.
King said the change was not made because Williams was unhappy, and he added the point guard himself has to play better.
Johnson also stood by Williams.
“From Day One, I always had a really good relationship with him. I don’t think it’s fair for anyone to hang this on Deron,” Johnson said. “We were just going through a bad streak, a bad spell. It’s not time for me to be down on one player. That would be the easy way.”
Brooklyn started the season 11-4, winning five in a row to end November, when Johnson was Eastern Conference coach of the month. But he couldn’t do anything to stop this slump, one the Nets never anticipated after a $350 million summer spending spree they believed would take them toward the top of their conference.
Johnson has been the Nets’ coach for a little more than two seasons. He went 60-116 with the Nets, who moved from New Jersey to Brooklyn to start the season. Johnson coached the Dallas Mavericks to a spot in the NBA Finals in 2006.
“You don’t always get a fair shake as a coach,” Johnson said. “I’m not the owner. If I were the owner, I wouldn’t have fired myself today. But life is not always necessary fair. It’s a business and in this business, the coach always gets blamed.”
This is the NBA’s second coaching change this season following the dismissal of Mike Brown by the Los Angeles Lakers.
Johnson arrived in New Jersey with a 194-70 record, a .735 winning percentage that was the highest in NBA history, but had little chance of success in his first two seasons while the Nets focused all their planning on the move to Brooklyn.
They looked to make a splash this summer when they re-signed Williams and fellow starters Gerald Wallace, Brook Lopez and Kris Humphries, traded for Atlanta All-Star Joe Johnson, and added veteran depth with players such as Reggie Evans, C.J. Watson and Andray Blatche.
Johnson didn’t have a contract beyond this season but seemed to have the confidence of Prokhorov, the Russian billionaire who before the season said he had faith in “the Avery defense system.”
Some thought the Nets would finish as high as second in the East behind defending champion Miami, and the predictions seemed warranted when the Nets started quickly amid much fanfare. But all the good publicity faded in recent weeks once the losing started.
Williams, who has struggled this season, stirred the waters when he expressed his preference for the offense he ran under Jerry Sloan in Utah before a loss to the Jazz. Williams and Johnson, nicknamed “Brooklyn’s Backcourt” and expected to be one of the best in the NBA, have shot poorly and rarely meshed.
The Nets were embarrassed near the end of their 93-76 loss to Boston, when fans exited early amid a chant of “Let’s go Celtics!”
“Nets fans deserved better,” Yormark tweeted after the game. “The entire organization needs to work harder to find a solution. We will get there.”
Not under Johnson, though.
The Nets should be able to entice a big-name coach with Prokhorov’s billions and the chance to play in a major market at Barclays Center, the $1 billion arena that has drawn praise in the city and from visiting teams.
Carlesimo has previous NBA head coaching experience in Portland, Golden State and Seattle/Oklahoma City. He has a career coaching record of 204-296 in the regular season and 3-9 in the playoffs.
“Right now, P.J. is our coach and I told him to coach the team like he’ll be here for the next 10 years,” King said.
