Although the U.S. imperialists engaged in the Year of the Dragon during the All-Star period, and stars from all walks of life went on camera to greet the New Year, it is obvious that they are just pretending to be and have no humanistic connotation at all, for example, the Nets fired coach Vaughn during the New Year, which violated the principle of "New Year".
It's a bit of a tradition for the Nets to fire their head coach, they fired Atkinson in 2020 and Nash in 2022. Before the All-Star break, the Nets lost 6 games and 5 losses, and Vaughn also said that he "fully believes that the current team can meet the next challenge after the All-Star break", and now it seems that the team no longer believes in Vaughn, or they believe that tomorrow will be better without Vaughn, so Vaughn can only speak and say thank the Nets for their cultivation, and then go to meet the next challenge in their lives.
Vaughn's dismissal makes sense, with a 21-33 record that isn't glamorous, and the team sits first outside the Eastern Conference play-offs, two minutes away from the play-in tournament5 wins. The last straw that broke the camel was the Nets' back-to-back losses in the last two games, which was 58 points, which is really sensitive. Of course, the record is only one aspect, and the Nets players also have a lot of criticism about Vaughn's technical and tactical ability. After the crushing defeat to Green Kai, Bridges said, "We have to know what we're doing." Players and coaches have to figure out the game plan. It sounds like Ohashi is still confused about the "game plan" after 54 games, and the point is obvious.
Vaughn's game plan is more or less like no plan, and the essence of the dynamic offensive shell is that Vaughn cedes discretion to the players on the field. According to Shams' description, this offense requires players to have "extremely high IQ", and it is not very strange that the Nets and their young people are confused on the court, after all, Dream Chaser has long said that there are not many smart people in this league.
Of course, Vaughn is not completely untroubled by his own offensive system, which requires a high IQ to implement, and he has handpicked Ben Simmons as the team's tactical core. Shams said on the show that Bridges and Dinwiddie were not "excited" about Vaughn's decision. After Shams finished speaking, commentator Lou Williams and several hosts were very excited, their expression management was completely out of control, and they laughed directly on the table, which can be said to be a loud laugh.
Ben Simmons routinely posted moving workouts during last summer's offseason, and the average fan didn't believe he could come back, but Vaughn seemed to believe it, so much so that he made the decision that didn't seem to have a very high IQ. In any case, Vaughn has no chance of proving whether the decision was right or wrong, after all, Bensi has only played 12 games this season, and Vaughn's successor will not be able to roast himself on the fire and shout out any more declarations with Bency at the heart of his tactics.
From the management's point of view, in addition to the appearance of poor results and loss of hearts, there is another reason for Vaughn's dismissal, which is related to the team's goals.
Marks, the team's general manager, said that Boss Cai did not order the team to make the playoffs this season, but it will not be a mess. So far, we have seen many teams in the league put on this middle-of-the-road rebuilding model, the Grizzlies are not rotten, the Nets are not, the Raptors are even more aggressive, they don't even want draft picks, why everyone is so strong in the 2023-24 season, largely related to the fact that there is no chosen son in the 24 draft, and it also has something to do with the fact that the team led by the two multi-million dollar coaches is too difficult to challenge. During the most prosperous period of the universe, everyone didn't like to spend money to upgrade the lineup, and the Pistons and Spurs were rotten to the bottom, so everyone was reluctant to put them bad, and the reason was actually the same.
There is another reason for the Nets, and they are not very useful. When Harden was traded, the Nets sent three first-round picks and four first-round swaps, and their first-round and first-round swaps were in the hands of the Rockets, so the Nets actually lost their reason to mess up.
Of course, we all know that "not rotten" is just a posture and statement, and the Pistons also said that they are not rotten, but in fact they don't have to pose to be bad, how the Nets can avoid this kind of actually rotten, which is another problem completely different from "not rotten". In terms of roster structure, it's hard to argue that the Nets don't have any competitiveness in the East, and they may struggle to make the playoffs, but there's hope for making the playoffs. Judging from Marks' attitude to Boss Cai, entering the play-offs is basically a complete task.
Replacing Vaughn to make the team play a little more disciplined and achieve this playoff mission may be the current thinking of Nets management. Of course, they should have a long-term goal, which comes from how they feel about the team.
Woj analyzed in a show that the Nets are going to rebuild around Bridges. Woj is very powerful as a source, but very average as an analyst, and his analysis is nonsense on the one hand, and it may only be half right on the other.
The Nets will indeed rebuild around Bridges, who has shown loyalty to the team some time ago, but that doesn't mean he's going to be the absolute core of the team going forward. Looking at the overall environment of the league, the top players are brushing the special brush, looking at the small environment of the Nets, the small train also has unlimited rights, Ohashi as the nominal boss of the Nets, this season is also at the level of 22 points per game, although the efficiency is much better than Ariza who went to the Rockets to be the boss, but considering the factors of the times, it is difficult for you to imagine that Ohashi's growth trajectory will make him a supergiant in the league, after all, he is 27 years old.
So the Nets are really going to build around Bridges, they're going to build around 24-year-old interior Nick Claxton, they're going to build around 27-year-old space forward Cameron Johnson, and that's all true, it's just this "around......"Building a team" is not what we usually understand, after all, the team that built around Cameron in history has not been successful, and Max can't be a maverick. So the "around" here means that the Nets will build a team around all these reliable players, and build a team that is only one supergiant away from soaring.
Bridges, a swingman 3D background, integrated offense and defense, emotionally stable, easy-going, not fighting or grabbing, low ball use rate and high efficiency, can be said to be the best two-in-command form, Cameron Johnson, efficient space No. 4, Claxton, the top cake king with both flexibility and basket protection ability, plus top 3D forward Finney Smith, these people are all important role players that are scarce in various championship teams, and everyone is full of praise for the Suns to fish out a Royce O'Neal.
Those superstars or quasi-stars in the league and their agent team also understand the ball, of course, they can see that the best is suitable for career development, the Nets have this lineup, Brooklyn's geographical advantage is not bad, Bridges still has a contract of less than 25 million annual salary for 2 and a half years, Cameron Johnson just started a contract of less than 100 million for 4 years, and after the end of this season, the Nets will probably spend 4 years and 100 million to renew Claxton, after these three high-quality contracts are settled, The team has plenty of salary space to sign ......Half Jaylen Brown, but it doesn't matter, the Nets still have Ben Simmons for 40 million, and the buddy only has the last year of his contract, which can be called a high-quality space cleaner and an excellent star trade chip.
Having said all this, another reason for the Nets to abandon Vaughn is obvious: as a coach, Vaughn is too low-rated. There are a lot of things to look at at at top players, and Vaughn's high-IQ basketball is likely not on their radar.
It is said that the Nets are now targeting Budenholzer, after all, the team's general manager Max and Budenholzer are both from the Spurs. Boss Cai has paid more than 300 million luxury taxes since he took over the team, and he doesn't seem to care about spending an extra 8 million for coaches.
This matter has also been analyzed by experts, saying that a fool can't start Alibaba, and Boss Cai is willing to continue to spend money for the Nets, which means that he must have something to earn. I've heard a lot of this kind of conclusive analysis, ranging from business or family education such as "your dad and I have eaten more bridges than you have eaten" to "the state must have a national reason for doing this, can you understand it better than the state?" In essence, it is a kind of "superior takes all" thinking, whether this kind of thinking is good or not, it is difficult to talk if it does not make sense logically.
After all, when we talk about the Nets' change of coach, the idea of building the Nets, and the prospect that they will be able to soar once they get one or two stars, we will inevitably recall the past four years, and it is also the four years when Boss Cai joined the Nets, what the Nets had and how they lost it step by step.
And before the start of the four years, they also had a fringe playoff team, they brought in Max, they cleared the team space, they reinvented the so-called team culture, and then they got Odudon, and the blossoms became a thing of the past, and then they started it all over again, like a kind of cycle, and in this cycle, they seem to have learned only one thing: the head coach can't hire young chicks.
So it's logical to chase Budenholzer, who is not only a championship coach, a league coach winner, but also the kind of presence who can lead the Hawks with Joe Johnson as the core to become a powerhouse in the Eastern Conference, but at the same time, he has also fallen out with the team's superstars because of his stubbornness. This is the case with many things in the world, and there is no such thing as a perfect game of chess, and there is no absolute path to success.
Of course, the boss can be a non-stick pan forever, especially the boss who spends money, Boss Cai also made it very clear, he said that he believes in the professionalism of professional managers, "I will maintain long-term patience with the general manager and give him room to operate." You can feel that Tsai Chongxin is throwing the pot of the team's loss of three superstars in a row in the past four years to Max, and you can also think that Tsai Chongxin is trying to protect Max, after all, their relationship with the surname Ma is quite good in their lives. But history shows that few general managers can survive three head coaches, the Nets have changed three heads in four years, only won one round of the playoffs, the relationship is good, the Americans are not even merciful for the New Year, you probably can't expect more affection.