It was last Jan. 28 at KeyArena in Seattle that a lanky, morose 7-footer sidled over to Lawrence Frank during warm-ups and made a request.
"You gotta get me out of here," Mikki Moore pleaded. "Please, coach."
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Quote:
"Do you know how long I've been trying to play with Jason Kidd?" Moore said. "I've got to get in the best shape of my career, because I've got to have an impact like Kenyon Martin did. They haven't had an athletic big since he left. That's my focus: If you can get downcourt, you're going to work out. I'm going to get to use my quickness and my jumping ability here."
if Moore really wants to be like KMart (minus the showboating) and if he produces results, I see no reason why the Nets can't run two different units. a half court unit, and a fast break unit.
ya, i like his attitude also. i also like the way frank is really directly challenging people such as he and wright to step up where they're needed.
unfortunately when you don't have the talent to be a starter this kind of has to be your attitude or you simply won't get on the roster. guys like jacques vaughn and robert pack and john thomas seemed to have terrific attitudes and yet it apparantly wasn't enough to stick around. for every chauncy billups there are hundreds of guys who drift from team to team, looking for that golden opportunity to show what they can do and hoping they don't flub the opportunity. even the mediocre starters on mediocre teams apparantly can do something special enough to beat out the 'unwashed masses'.
nevertheless i'm not really cynical about mikki and i truly hope he can give the nets what they (we) need. he certainly brings some dimensions to the table that the other big men are not so strong in...
Mikki is long, athletic, and has good lateral movement, but he doesn't have a lot of basketball IQ. He picks up ticky tack fouls, and doesn't move well off ball. His fundamentals are lacking as well. However, the athleticism is there. So we'll have to see. Kenyon wasn't just athletic, he was surprisingly good at anticipating where to be and how to act in situations.
K-Mart was also a beast on offensive boards. Thats something he was really smart at knowing where the ball was going to come off so he could grab it and throw it back in the hoop.
Kenyon' average ORB per game was 1.93 while he was in Jersey. To put that in perspective, Nenad Krstic averaged 2.2 offensive rebounds per game for his career. Tmac for his career is a 1.8 ORB per game player.
Martin has had some sick put-backs, but he is not a beast on the offensive boards. He is average at best for a big man.
Moore was just dying to be here
