Mikhail Prokhorov Declares Nets Deal With Losing Dead As New Jersey Beats The Jazz, 103-95

Prokhorov had another press conference after the Nets win over the Jazz,

I just want to say a few words concerning the losing situation here in New Jersey.  I feel that wins have taken too long and I'm not happy with how the season has played out.

I feel that losing has taken a toll on the players.  There is no doubt that it has cost us many wins.

The players and coaches have done a great job with the situation.  There comes a time however when losing becomes too much and the cost to our franchise is too expensive.

Therefore, before the game, I instructed our team to stop losing immediately and to walk away from losing.  Our future meetings with teams which will result in losses are hereby canceled.  We will be pursuing other options such as winning.

We were doomed from the beginning.

I don't feel much like breaking this one down.  If I see/hear one more thing about the comeback kids, I'm going to puke.  I want to see the wire-to-wire win kids or the blowout kids, or the consistent play kids.

What I worry most about now is how are they going to pull out of this funk?  Al is devastated though Raja said they haven't hit rock bottom.  He must be a glass half full guy because back to back losses against the Wizards and Nets is pretty close to the bottom.  When Sasha Vujacic is working you, you have a problem.They've made both teams look good in the process.

Sloan stated in his interview after the game that the reason for the losses recently has been from a lack of effort and that the energy doesn't look very good. So the question becomes then how do you change that?  Even if the team isn't executing like it should, there should always be that hustle and get after it-ness.

I've written before that it will be interesting to see how the Jazz come out after a couple of bad losses.  It's easy to be great teammates and overlook mistakes when you're winning.  It's an entirely different thing to fight back from ugly, ugly losses like these.  We'll see what this team is made of over the next week.  Even if they lose to Boston (who they will now blow out by 30 no doubt), we will see if they come to play or not.

Click on through for the roll call and some player stats

• NetsDaily

• Al has been pulling his weight on offense this month.  He's having the best month of the season so far in January.  The only thing that is down is his free-throw shooting.  It's way down though from 80% to 60%.  
  
  His worst shooting game this month came on the 1st in a win over Memphis when he went 3-12.  Since then, he's 66-120 (55%).   The Jazz are now 15-5 when he shoots over 50%.
  
  And keep taking it to the hole hard Al.
• AK had his moments tonight to start the game but then made some weird decisions in crunch  time.  He took an ill-advised long two in crunch time and then missed a wide-open layup.  On the missed layup he appeared to have lost his legs a bit.  He did go to the line 14 times.  That's the first time since December of 2009 and only the second since 2006 that he's had that many attempts.
• I didn't see anything in Deron's game that looked like he was still suffering from the flu.  His 20, 10 & 5 becomes a footnote in the loss.
• Millsap had his second poor game in a row.  He was in foul trouble tonight but it wasn't until late where it looked like he was effectively able to do anything on offense.
• The Nets guards got inside all night long  This is Jordan Farmar we're talking about.  Anything the Nets wants to get offensively, they were given.  A reminder, this is pretty much the worst team in the league offensively.  
• The Jazz were able to get 18 turnovers from the Nets and scored 17 points off of those.
• Wish we could have seen some more Fess tonight to see if he could have kept Lopez off the block.  Can we start calling him Brooklyn Lopez in a couple of years?

Game Thread Roll Call

Roll Call: Rog., moni, RRR, Brigadier Pudding, IronPalm, ForTheLove, ut2006, dwillforlife, the new Bradfather, dianaallen, EcERyda69, zdid, Basketball John, chicagorilla, kirkhambiz, Dyl, BobbyD31, rxmike12, neds, AllThatJazzBasketball, jsal, Shums, pacoelcid, smacktalk801, candybarr15
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