Following the Nets: Price of Salt in Egypt

It was 5 a.m. and the Middle Eastern house music had stopped. This was as good a time as any to break the bleary, pre-dawn silence.

"Do you follow the NBA," I asked the driver of the town car.

"Oh, yes, I love it," he replied, "but I like soccer a lot too."

He was a good talker, Ya-Ya, an American citizen for eight years by way of Egypt. He didn't initiate the conversation, but once it started we touched on plenty of subjects -- the World Cup, the price of salt in his home country, the NCAA tournament, but least of all, the NBA -- during the rare traffic-free, 20-minute ride from my Hoboken apartment to Newark Airport.

So why was I up at 5 in the morning darkness and in the back of town car listening to Egyptian electronica and to an explanation as to why Egyptians are willing pay twice as much for American salt as they would for their own brands?

Because the first flight to Dallas to see the New Jersey Nets take on the red-hot Mavericks was at 6:45 a.m. ET.

Based on a germ of an idea -- what's it like to be with a seven-win team during the malamute days of March? -- FanHouse will follow the Nets through Dallas, Oklahoma City and Houston this week as they try to avoid setting the NBA record for fewest wins in a season.

As of now, the Philadelphia 76ers wear the scarlet number "9" for going 9-73, appropriately enough, in the 1972-73 season. The 7-56 Nets would like to reach at least 10 in 2010. Getting to 13 wouldn't be bad either, considering the stink of losing 70-plus games can't be easily washed away, but then asking the Nets to double their win total in season's final five weeks after they could barely reach that total during the season's first four months may be asking a bit much.

Maybe that should be their rallying cry: "10 in '10." While that may be setting the bar quite low for an NBA squad, it's something for a team that has sipped its share of Meadowlands swamp water this season. They've had bad luck (in their first game, the Nets lost on a flailing last-second heave to the Timberwolves, a team that's only won 14 games), which led to an NBA record for most losses to begin a season (18), numerous injuries and their highest paid player, Bobby Simmons at nearly $11 million per year, has played only 329 minutes in 23 games this season.

The misfortune has also manifested itself on the sideline as the Nets canned the Eastern Conference's longest-tenured coach, Lawrence Frank, in November. They then saw assistant Del Harris, whom they brought on after Frank's firing, leave two months into his tenure as sage to Kiki Vandeweghe. To his credit, Vandeweghe has been the coach for all seven wins. To his debit, Vandeweghe is also the Nets' GM and he put together this team.

This Nets squad is not totally devoid of talent. Devin Harris is an All-Star point guard. Center Brook Lopez is the last of a breed of back-to-the-bucket posts and very good at it. Courtney Lee played in the Finals for the Orlando Magic last year and coach Stan Van Gundy thought enough of his skills to design the final play of regulation in Game 2 to go to him.

After that, though, the cupboard is almost as empty as the Izod Center on a weeknight. And thanks to a team with a bad record and an old arena, the Izod Center is almost always empty these days. It will soon be permanently so when the Nets move to Newark for two years and then on to greener asphalt at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

But that's down the road. As for Ya-Ya, he's a Knicks fan. Nice, but as the Prudential Center, the Nets' temporary home, lay just off the highway we were on, it was the appropriate time to ask: do you ever watch or talk about the Nets?

He paused ... for a while.

"I like some of the guys on the Boston team," Ya-Ya finally said. "What are they called?"

Somehow the Celtics, like the price of Egyptian salt, surprisingly managed to work their way into the conversation. And why do Egyptians pay twice as much for the American sodium as they do their own salt?

Because, Ya-Ya explained, Egyptians love everything American.

Well, except maybe the New Jersey Nets, which, if you think about, is just more salt in the wound.