Frankly Speaking, Frank Takes the Fall

Lawrence Frank ended his head coaching career with the New Jersey Nets in pretty much the opposite way he began it. The streak had been turned completely on its head – a 0-16 wretched beginning to this season obliterated the 13-0 winning jolt that ushered in his first month as head coach nearly six years ago.

But most everything else about him remained the same: Frank was still the rumpled basketball geek (his description) more concerned with making the game about the players, rather than floating stories that revolved around the guy with the clipboard. When the Nets "relieved" Frank of his duties early Sunday morning -- the term "fired," while technically true, seems harsh, considering some would consider Frank blessed to be freed from a team scuffling at the ownership level on down -- he accepted the news with self-effacing grace.

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Liberated from a franchise he has served in various capacities for close to a decade, and spared the humiliation of coaching the team 's 17th straight defeat, Frank could have decided this was a fine time to share certain details. He could have offered names and circumstances regarding loafers on the roster, because no matter how deep the team's injuries, it should never be acceptable for professional athletes to quit so early in the season. Better, Frank could have dropped a dime on the Nets' fluctuating ownership dramas, and how they might impact the market for free agents, as well as the team's impending move from New Jersey to Brooklyn.

Instead, with the team in almost exactly the same disarray as it was when he took over in the winter of 2004 (player unrest, the streets of Prospect Heights being swept for a new arena), Frank merely packed away the game tapes he had been studying all night, told a few players he was honored to have coached them and prepared for his first day without basketball since anyone can remember.

It had to be done, this separation, because the Nets proved across the past week that they had finally tuned out Frank, the coaching lifer. Nets president Rod Thorn hoped the team's swing out west might reinvigorate the players, especially now that All-Star point guard Devin Harris and shooting guard Courtney Lee were back and healthy. But the Nets continued to play ugly, uninspiring stretches of ball, a streak that went from abysmal Friday night in Sacramento to just plain embarrassing Sunday night in Los Angeles.

In the shadow of Friday's loss to the Kings, Thorn decided to fire Frank and replace him, at least for the game against the Lakers, with Nets assistant coach Tom Barrise. Thorn plans to meet Monday with others in the organization, including owner Bruce Ratner (assuming he can break away from his architectural sketches), to decide on the interim coach.

But can one person halt the disease, the lethargy that has turned the Nets into one of sport's greatest embarrassments? Can general manager Kiki Vandeweghe -- if he even wants the job as head coach, a dubious assumption – shake up a team that, by virtue of Sunday's dreary 106-87 loss to the Lakers, has now tied the 1988-89 Miami Heat and 1998-99 Los Angeles Clippers for the worst start in NBA history? How can Barrise or fellow assistant John Loyer grab the attention of players who tuned out Frank? Can somebody, anybody, manage to impart to the Nets that traveling with the ball and making ill-advised passes won't lead to many wins?

"Lawrence always approached every day with a passion for his craft that was infectious, and his dedication to the game as well as his work ethic are to be both admired and appreciated," Thorn said in a statement. "I wish he and his family only the best of good fortune in the future."

Thorn is also said to be looking outside the organization, possibly at Del Harris, who has made the head coaching rounds with the Lakers, the Rockets and the Bucks. Whoever is awarded the "honor" of coaching the Nets will inherit not just a roster diminished by aches and strains, but an owner who keeps doing his darnedest to make the Nets arguably the most uninteresting team on the East Coast.

It is one thing to be non-competitive, quite another to lack any entertainment value. Bruce Ratner (pictured right), the current owner, keeps cutting the team at the knees with a mandate to trim payroll, leading to the trades of fan favorites such as Jason Kidd, Richard Jefferson and Vince Carter. Six years after Kenyon Martin left the Nets for more money and a steadier future, he still blames Ratner for destroying the Nets, just as they were turning into a team that had the rest of the NBA by the throat.

"When you let people who have never played the game of basketball make decisions, that's what you get. Bruce Ratner came in and made decisions and it affected everything from that point on. The blame for that has to go somewhere. It can't always be on the players," Martin, a force on the New Jersey teams that made the NBA Finals in 2002 and 2003, recently told the New York Daily News.

Ratner's focus clearly is on his real estate holdings, particularly a prime parcel of Atlantic Yards land in Brooklyn, the supposed future home of the Nets. Daniel Goldstein, spokesman for Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, calls Ratner's proposed project "a sham," adding the arena design is "lipstick on a corrupt pig, window dressing on a boondoggle." If Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov does acquire a majority share of the Nets, he'll be inheriting a royal mess.

Frank, 39 but with bags under his eyes that suggests he's closer to 59, had such an auspicious start with the Nets, back before Ratner began meddling. Despite lacking head coaching experience on any level, Frank took over for Byron Scott, his friend and boss, when Scott was fired in early 2004. The Nets proceeded to go 13-0, setting a NBA record for most consecutive wins by a head coach to begin a coaching career. Frank had a tireless energy, a love for breaking down tapes and a passion for detail and loyalty cultivated at the side of Bob Knight.

There was one time, fairly soon after Frank was named head coach, when he was so consumed with the game, with his responsibilities, his young daughter literally thought he lived inside the television set. He was either a rumpled man pacing the sidelines, stuck inside the box, or at home on the couch, studying game tape after tape. Dillon, then 2 1/2, kept crawling behind the television and screaming, "No more daddy in TV! Daddy come home!"

Frank knows where the bodies are buried in the swamp, but he's surely too classy, too loyal, to point fingers.
The Nets, under Frank, made the playoffs in his first four seasons, but the downside, as it often is in sports, could be exhausting. "How long will I last coaching? As long as my family will let me. As long as the team will have me," he once told me. "I just want to stay under the radar."

The end came Sunday, not unexpectedly. After spending the early months fiddling with lineups featuring only eight healthy bodies, the Nets regressed on this western hump, with Frank questioning his team's effort Friday in Sacramento, when the Nets allowed 59 points in the first half. Frank told confidants that he knew then he had lost his team.

"That's a month or more of losses, that's really tough to live through," said Lakers coach Phil Jackson, who as an assistant coach survived a 15-game losing streak with the Nets in 1981, only to flip the experience around into a lifetime of excellence. "You're at a loss for words. The words aren't going to help. Action is what's going to help at that particular time."

Without Frank, and with the league's worst start to a season only four more quarters away, the Nets return home, to play old friend Kidd and the Dallas Mavericks Wednesday. Frank knows where the bodies are buried in the swamp, but he's surely too classy, too loyal, to point fingers. But everyone knows one hard truth: Finding a head coach to reverse the losing spiral is the least of New Jersey's problems.