Free Republic

Coach of the month in November, out of a job by New Year's. The Brooklyn Nets have elevated expectations this season, and a .500 record wasn't good enough. Coach Avery Johnson was fired Thursday, his team having lost 10 of 13 games after a strong start to its first season in Brooklyn. "We don't have the same fire now than we did when we were 11-4," general manager Billy King said at a news conference in East Rutherford, N.J. "I tried to talk to Avery about it and we just can't figure it out. The same pattern kept on happening."...

Book Review: Aspire Higher: Winning on and off the Court with Determination, Discipline, and Decisions. Written by Avery Johnson with Roy S. Johnson. Published by HarperCollins, 2008. On page four of his book, Avery Johnson tells the story of a young player that he recently had in training camp that was very good at numbers, but not so good at basketball. Avery's assessment was that the guy “needed to be on Wall Street, not in the NBA.” He summed up his assessment of the potential player by saying that “Basketball wasn't his gift – numbers were.” Unfortunately, a similar assessment...

The first six years of Johnson’s NBA career saw him play for five different teams. It was a vagabond NBA life that even included being cut on Christmas Eve by the Nuggets. Yet Johnson didn’t just persevere, he ultimately thrived. The man refused to listen to his doubters, many of whom questioned whether he can lead an NBA team. “You don’t have to be first to come in first,” said Johnson, . . . who recently became the fastest coach in NBA history to reach 150 wins. “You can be last and still come in first. And I was last....