Team Report: Getting Inside

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Team Report: Getting Inside

Getting Inside | Notes and Quotes | Roster Report
The plan was to revamp the bench, which the Nets have done without question. And they've done it with youth, without question.

So the question is, how quickly can four rookies and a second-year player adapt?

"We have a much different bench than we had last year, that's for sure," said team president Rod Thorn. "We had a lot of experience last year. This year, we aren't nearly as experienced."

The Nets are on the verge of bringing Mile Ilic over from Europe in a move strictly for the future. They want Ilic to bulk up, to watch, to learn. This was the approach they used a few years back with Nenad Krstic, but circumstances forced Krstic into the rotation.

The Nets have believed all along that definitely two and possibly all three of their drafted rookies -- point guard Marcus Williams and forward/center Josh Boone of UConn plus swingman Hassan Adams of Arizona -- would land rotation positions. And they wanted to bring Ilic over. That plan was shelved when Boone required shoulder surgery that will sideline him until December, forcing the acquisition of veteran Mikki Moore, who ate up a roster spot.

But another spot opened when Zoran Planinic reached agreement with Tau Ceramica of Spain and engineered an accord with the Nets to waive him. Planinic was little used last year, playing 596 total minutes.

There remains one roster spot, which the Nets hope to use on a veteran shooter. That's one way of getting some experience on the bench which also contains second-year swingman Antoine Wright. He played all of 370 minutes last year.

And the bench has Cliff Robinson, who'll be 40 in December (and on the suspended list for the first two games of the season), Moore, in his second stint with the Nets, and Bostjan Nachbar, who the Nets acquired last season near the trading deadline and then promptly ignored. They've been silent on the free agent front (they got Moore for a 2009 second round pick) but that could change if they can find a reasonably priced shooter.

"We feel our improvement is going to have to be internal. We knew we weren't going to be big free agent players," said coach Lawrence Frank. "So by and large, we'll add probably one or two guys to our roster and hopefully they'll be able to help us. But it's going to come from within so we put a lot of pressure on our guys to raise their level of play. We have to continue to get better and find different ways to maximize our personnel."