D-Day: Devin Harris practicing with the Nets

[banpeikun]

http://blog.nj.com/netsblast/2008/02/dday.html

D-Day
Posted by Dave D. February 27, 2008 2:43PM
Categories: Latest News

This is interesting: The guy walks into his first practice session of the year, one week into a new job, never having done anything but dummy offense in his first six days, and dad hands him the keys to the Bentley, no questions asked.

Here - it's your team, L-Frank pretty much told Devin Harris today. Try not to dent it.

No, he's not giddy over one practice, he's just being realistic. The sooner Harris turns into a leader, the better off the Nets will be.

"We really want him to take ownership with this, we want him to feel comfortable with it, we want him to be assertive, having the freedom to make play-calls," the coach said. "But in order to do that, you have to have an understanding of what we look for. But he seems to be a quick study."

Harris said Friday night that the entire curriculum has flipped here, vis-Ã*-vis Dallas. There, Avery Johnson liked "absolute control, and he likes to run things a certain way," Harris said. "But here, (Frank) told me he's going to let me run the show with some freedom - he'll give me that freedom before he takes it away. It's kind of an opposite situation, and I'm looking forward to it."

L-Frank confirms it all:

"Both of us are going to have to take a leap of faith," he said. "It's important for the point guard and the head coach to have a special relationship - especially when you acquire someone in the middle of the year like Devin, where you have no past history: Both sides have to be willing to take that leap of faith.

"There's some trust we're going to give each other without earning it, and the only way that trust erodes is based on performance or [the head coach getting pissed at his lack of] preparation. So we'll each take a leap of faith, understanding it's work in progress, but we're both going to start here as opposed to starting in the basement."


* * * *

Anyway, practice went well for Harris - the ankle held up fine, he got his second wind halfway through, and he's ahead of the learning curve.

"I felt good, went through the whole practice, full contact and everything. It was a good day," he said.

"Looked like the Tasmanian Devil, fast as hell," D. Armstrong said.

They'll decide after shootaround whether he'll play his hometown team, the Bucks, tomorrow night.

* * * *

Somebody start counting the number of times a point guard has walked into a mediocre team's gym in midseason and helped it turn the corner. Payton and Milwaukee? Bold move, but he was used off the ball pretty often with Sam next to him. Stephon in New York? By now we know that was purely phony progress. Baron in Golden State? It sure cured his (ahem) back problem, but he didn't get the Warriors into the playoffs that year. Andre in Philly? They were a very nice team once he made it his own, but the promise of '06-07 faded pretty quickly this year.

If we're leaving out somebody obvious, speak up.