Larry Brown Sports

Mike Dunleavy is a serious candidate for the Brooklyn Nets head coaching job, the New York Daily News reports.

The Nets decided not to retain interim coach P.J. Carlesimo, who went 35-19 during the regular season after replacing Avery Johnson as the team’s head coach in December.

Jeff Van Gundy was initially reported to be a candidate for the job, but Yahoo! Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski later said the interest did not appear to be mutual, likely because Van Gundy is happy serving as a commentator for ABC/ESPN. Phil Jackson has been mentioned as a candidate, but he may be more interested in a front office position.

The Daily News says Dunleavy has a good relationship with Nets GM Billy King and is golfing buddies with him.

Dunleavy, 59, lost his job as Clippers coach/GM during the 2009-2010 season and hasn’t coached since. The Daily News says Dunleavy had discussions with King about the job during the season.

Dunleavy and Jeff Van Gundy were mentioned as candidates for the job in December before Carlesimo was made interim head coach. At the time, Dunleavy openly lobbied for the position on his radio show.

Stan Van Gundy, Brian Shaw, and Jerry Sloan have also been mentioned as candidates for the position.

We’re thinking that the Nets won’t be able to land the big name they’re seeking and that someone like Dunleavy is much more realistic.

Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian is making it known that he would like to purchase Jay-Z’s ownership share in the Brooklyn Nets.

Last week it was reported that Jay-Z will be selling his ownership share in the Nets — an amount less than one percent of the franchise — in order to become a certified NBA agent.

Ohanian, who sold the popular social media site Reddit.com in 2006, is a Brooklyn native and Nets season-ticket holder, according to NetsDaily.com. Ohanian tweeted last week to express his interest in buying Jay-Z’s shares:

My man @joshglasser gave me the great idea to grab Jay-Z’s @brooklynnets shares.

— Alexis Ohanian (@alexisohanian) April 10, 2013

Ohanian was also on Bloomberg TV’s “Money Moves” Tuesday where he again expressed his interest in buying Jay-Z’s share of the Nets.

“Absolutely,” answered Ohanian when asked if he would have interest in buying Jay-Z’s share. “In fact, I have tried to make as many public and private overtures as I can to let HOVA know that I would absolutely be honored to buy those shares.”

Nets Daily also says Jay-Z will decide who purchases his share of the team. Jay-Z reportedly paid $1 million for his stake in the team.

You can see Ohanian’s interview with “Money Moves” below. The Nets part comes at the very end:

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Brooklyn Nets forward Reggie Evans had his best game of the season on Wednesday in a win over the Portland Trailblazers, scoring 22 points and grabbing a whopping 26 rebounds. For a player who averages 4.2 points and 10.4 rebounds per game, it was a standout performance. So what got into him?

Evans says he drew motivation from a teammate who thought he should be benched.

“I got frustrated one day when one of my teammates told my coach to take me out the game,” he told the NY Daily News. “I bit my tongue. I didn’t say nothing to (my teammate).

“But me, knowing me, I usually attack and say something. I bit my tongue. I said, ‘Ok.’ I said, ‘Alright, start being aggressive.’ So I took it in a positive way, instead of just doing my normal self, like ‘What you say? What you say?”

That channeled aggression has led to 7.3 points and 15.5 rebounds per game in the month of March. He has grabbed more than 20 rebounds on four separate occasions during the month, which is no coincidence. When you accomplish something like that, you’re dominating the glass.

Evans did not provide any details about whether he heard the teammate make the comment or if head coach PJ Carlesimo told him about it, but something seems to have clicked. You don’t grab 15.5 rebounds per game over a month stretch without giving 100% effort. The Nets will need that to continue come playoff time if they want to make a run.

H/T The Brooklyn Game via Pro Basketball Talk

Commercial breaks, timeouts and halftime are the best opportunities to take a bathroom break or hit the concession stands when you attend a sporting event. It’s the only way to assure that you don’t miss any of the action, and if you paid good money for a ticket you want to get the full experience. However, these are the times when bathroom and concession lines are the longest. Fear not, Brooklyn Nets fans — you guys are covered.

According to The Verge, the Nets launched a new addition to their Barclays Center smart phone app on Wednesday night that allows fans to stream the games for free on their iPhone or Android device while inside the stadium. This means that any time a fan gets thirsty or needs to use the restroom, they can simply pull the game up on their phone and continue watching while they are away from their seat.

And that’s not all. If you happen to miss something — say while the dude at the beer stand is taking your order — the app allows you to rewind up to 30 seconds of missed action. It also allows you to switch between four cameras, some of which feature the regular TV broadcast views and others that stream from GoPro cameras mounted around the arena.

The app is powered through Cisco’s StadiumVision Mobile, which incorporates an advanced “multicast” system that is supposed to remain uninterrupted even if 19,000 people are using it at once. It sounds so advanced that I’m fully confident a Nets PR team that sends tweets like this had nothing to do with developing it.

It may be disturbing to some, but we live in a world where people’s faces are constantly buried in smart phones and tablet devices. If you’re thinking people don’t need WiFi and live-streaming games on their phone while they’re at an actual sporting event — think again. All stadiums and arenas will likely have this at some point. The Nets are simply ahead of the curve.

H/T Gizmodo

The Brooklyn Nets public relations staff’s Twitter account knocked it out of the park with this dynamite nugget they dropped following the team’s 113-111 overtime win over the Milwaukee Bucks on Tuesday:

#Nets now 32-0 when outscoring opponent this season

— Nets PR Dept. (@Nets_PR) February 20, 2013

Public relations staffs for sports teams are tasked with keeping track of statistics that make the team look good, and their hope is that the media and fans will pick up on it. For instance, the Nets PR team tweeted nuggets about the team’s bench, overtime winning streak, and hot 3-point shooting. But some clever fox decided to remind you of the most obvious fact of all time. Slow clap for the Nets’ PR department for that one.

H/T Deadspin

On the surface, it would appear that firing Avery Johnson was exactly what the Brooklyn Nets needed. The former coach was let go at the end of December, and the team has gone 13-4 since interim head coach PJ Carlesimo took over. However, LeBron James feels that the improvement has more to do with effort than it does coaching style.

“They’re playing like they want to play for their coach,” LeBron said on Wednesday before the Miami Heat beat the Nets in Brooklyn, via the NY Post. “It sucks that Avery [Johnson] had to take the hit of them not wanting to play at a high level, but that’s how it looks to me. They haven’t changed their offense, they haven’t changed their defense. They’ve just picked up the intensity level, and you can tell they like to play for P.J. [Carlesimo].”

That may be so. Deron Williams averaged nearly two more assists and two more points in the month of January, after previously admitting that he was struggling to learn Johnson’s offense. LeBron openly questioned Johnson’s firing when it happened, pointing to the fact that the Nets went 11-4 during the month of November. Brooklyn was off to a 3-10 start in December at the time of Johnson was canned.

Such is life in professional sports. Sometimes a coach wears out his welcome and can’t get the best effort from his players. Other times the head coach becomes of a victim of circumstance when his team is just incredibly inconsistent. If the Nets end up having a terrible month of February, we’ll have a better idea of why Johnson was run out of town.

Jeff Van Gundy and Mike Dunleavy reportedly are two of the names on the Brooklyn Nets’ list of potential head coaches. The Nets fired Avery Johnson on Thursday, just 28 games into the season. Assistant coach P.J. Carlesimo was promoted to interim head coach, but the team is believed to have its eyes on some other candidates.

At the top of the team’s list is Phil Jackson, who is said to be open to hearing their offer. Jackson reportedly was prepared to accept the Lakers job until it was given to Mike D’Antoni. He famously is only interested in coaching teams he believe can win a championship. The 14-14 Nets likely will not fit that criteria, so we doubt he will seriously consider the position, though CBS Sports’ Ken Berger says Jackson is “intrigued” by the job.

Van Gundy is said to be high on the Nets’ list if they are unable to get Jackson. ESPN New York says the Nets hold Van Gundy “in high regard” and consider him a serious candidate for the job. Yahoo! Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski says Van Gundy is interested in the position, but he will not talk to the team until after the season out of respect for the current coach. The Nets were turned down by Van Gundy before hiring Johnson in 2010.

In addition to Van Gundy, Wojnarowski mentioned Kelvin Sampson as a potential candidate for the job. Sampson served as the Rockets’ head coach while Kevin McHale took a personal leave of absence last month. The New York Times’ Howard Beck says Sampson’s name has been discussed, but he is not viewed as a “significant candidate.”

Beck mentioned former Clippers coach Mike Dunleavy as a candidate (as did ESPN New York). Dunleavy lobbied for the job on his radio show.

“First off, I’m from Brooklyn, so if ever given the opportunity to coach a team from Brooklyn, it would be a dream come true,” Dunleavy said on his SiriusXM show, via the New York Times. “Right now, to the best of my understanding, is that P. J. has been given the job on an interim basis — I’m not sure with the opportunity to keep it or not — but he’s a friend of mine, he’s a good coach and I wish him all the best in what he’s doing right now.”

Both ESPN New York and the Times mention Larry Brown as a potential candidate, citing his relationship with Billy King. Brown is currently in his first season as coach at SMU. Nate McMillan and Flip Saunders have also been mentioned as candidates for the job.

The Nets beat the Bobcats at home 97-81 on Friday in their first game under Carlesimo.

Photo credit: Greg M. Cooper-US PRESSWIRE