After Nets loss, "Kidd rips players" and backlash continues

The Brooklyn Nets lost big at home last night to the league-leading Indiana Pacers, showing the limits of a team without injured center Brooklyn Lopez.

Had the team won, or came close, the narrative would have concerned the team's resilience, and depth, as well as the powers of General Manager Billy King and Coach Jason Kidd.

Instead, the Daily News offered the back page headlined "Nets Losin' It," with the subhead, "Kidd rips players after Pacers loss, butts heads with Deron." That would be star point guard Deron Williams.

Below, as shown in the Twitter screenshot, Daily News beat writer Stefan Bondy and Times columnist Harvey Araton took turns blasting the Nets, after, as Bondy wrote in his article:

According to their coach, the Nets are something worse than losers — they’re quitters.
More than 30 minutes after his team was embarrassed by the Pacers, 103-86, Monday night in Brooklyn, Jason Kidd arrived late to his postgame press conference with his harshest words thus far for a team in a tailspin.
“I think it’s getting really close to just accepting losing,” the first-year coach said. “We kind of get comfortable with losing and we have to make a stand with that because when things get tough, do we give in? Most of the time right now we do.”
It’s a damaging implication for a group of high-priced veterans, a gutsy remark for a coach who had previously preached togetherness and the importance of “not letting go of the rope.”

That suggests something may be in the works: a trade, a coaching change, and, perhaps, more variable pricing to get people in the seats. And now both coaches fired last year--Avery Johnson and P.J. Carlesimo--look like they were given far less slack than rookie coach Kidd.