With Kidd gone, Nets looking closely at Lionel Hollins
Memphis Grizzlies coach Lionel Hollins shouts during the first half of a game against the Nets in Memphis. (Jan. 25, 2013) Credit: AP
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — Billy King isn’t wasting much time in his quest to find a new coach.
With Jason Kidd officially now in Milwaukee as the Bucks coach, the Nets general manager already began the replacement process, meeting with Lionel Hollins.
King, along with assistant general managers Bobby Marks and Frank Zanin, had dinner with the ex-Grizzlies coach Monday night and King said the plan was to get together again sometime Tuesday.
King is searching for an experienced coach, and although free agency is now underway, he’s not about to rush things. But he acknowledged he’d like to have his new coach in place in the near future.
“Soon,” King said Tuesday at the PNY Center. “I think we’d like to get someone in here soon. Good thing we got a group coming back. It is free agency, but when you have 3.2 [million under the salary cap] … If I was sitting there in Miami with 55 million, I’d be a little more concerned. We don’t have that, so we know our options and we know free agents and what we have. So last night, you reach out to some people. But for us, it's not going to happen quickly because people have got to filter the offers and see where things go.”
The prime target still appears to be Hollins, 60, who compiled a 214-201 during his time with the Grizzlies, including a 56-26 record in 2012-13 season. He’s someone who’s well-respected around the league.
"If you look at track record and what he did in Memphis, he was able to go in there and take a team, added some veterans and they continually got better,” King said. “He developed some young guys, [Marc] Gasol, some bug guys. If you look at Memphis, they got consistently got better every year. All the way to the Western Conference Finals.”
As for Kidd, King said he didn’t harbor any bad feelings in response to him bolting for the midwest. The prospect of Kidd leaving was something King said he learned of on Wednesday, the day before the Nets unveiled their new practice facility site in Brooklyn at a press conference that Kidd also attended. Things intensified somewhat Friday leading into the weekend before it became public Saturday night.
Although Kidd’s timing might not necessarily have been right, given it’s happening right after the draft and leading into free agency, King said he took his personal feelings out of it, understanding the business aspect of someone else wanting to take another job, citing his good friend Larry Brown as an example.
King wasn’t about to play Monday Morning quarterback when Kidd’s track record of messy breakups with some of his previous teams was brought up.
“You don’t go into it thinking, ‘I’m going to hire him, and the next thing you know,’ “ King said. “… You look at all of those things, and you take it into account when you make the decision. But you can’t always hold people’s pasts against them when you make decisions, because some people as they go through changes in life, they mature and different things happen. Now it’s easy in hindsight for everybody to write and say, ‘Oh, they should have known this.’
“I think it’s for the fact that, let’s just not sit here and throw shots at Jason. It happened. A business decision was made, and to me the year I spent working with Jason I learned a lot. I thought he did a great job, and I wish him well. I really, truly do. I hope he has great success in Milwaukee. [New Bucks owner] Marc Lasry is a friend of mine, as well, and I wish Marc and [the Bucks other new owner] Wes Edens, I have a relationship with Wes, as well, through my kids at school. So I don’t have any ill for them. I want them to have success, I want Jason to be successful. It didn’t happen here, but for the year he was here, he did a great job for us.
“So I’m not going to sit here and just throw darts at him … For the year he worked for us here, he did a hell of a job. He got us from when we were 10-21, and a lot of you guys were asking the question, ‘Is he on the hot seat?’ and I said no. I supported him then, and I supported him at the end of the year. I think he has the ability to be a great coach, and I think he will be. I’m not going take shots just because of what happened here. He did a great job for us last year, getting us through a tough time.
"Would we have liked to go further? Yes.”
