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Stern likes Mike for NetsDavid Stern is trying to get Michael Jordan back into the NBA as an owner, but it doesn't look as if Jordan will be buying the Nets, even though he has been approached about doing so. "It's something that I'm involved in," Stern said yesterday on a conference call when asked about Jordan's future. "I continue to think that he will be back in the league. It's fair to say that it's something that's being worked on and thought about on a continuing basis." According to a league source familiar with the sale of the Nets, Jordan and his business manager were contacted several days ago about buying the team when the "book" laying out the team's complete financial picture went out to prospective buyers. "If Jordan was interested, he would have been all over this," the source said. "But it's not very probable that he's going to get involved. There's a lot of heavy lifting involved here." Read the Full Story Discuss Send Feedback Buy Tickets Scott expanding role as the Nets open campNo more CEO role for Byron Scott this season. As he opens his fourth training camp this morning as Nets' coach, Scott expects to take a more "hands-on" approach than the last two seasons in particular, when his teams reached the NBA Finals. These Nets will bear more of his brand in part out of necessity, with assistants Eddie Jordan and Mike O'Koren gone. The Princeton offense that Jordan served as caretaker now belongs to Scott and his lone holdover assistant, Lawrence Frank, as new assistants Larry Drew and Don Newman learn it. In another way, it's a matter of circumstance. Scott finds himself without a contract extension, in the final season of his initial deal, and with the shadow of his reported rift with Jason Kidd still lingering from the off-season. Scott insists their relationship is fine and that walking the lame-duck tightrope does not matter to him. Still, he expects to spend far more time in the trenches with his team, at least initially. "I have to change obviously because I have two new guys [Drew and Newman] who don't know exactly everything that we do," said Scott, who opens camp today for players with four years or less experience before the rest of the roster reports Friday. "It's going to take them a little bit of time. So obviously for me it's going to be much more hands-on the first two or three months until those guys get acclimated to how we're doing things." Read the Full Story Discuss Send Feedback Buy Tickets Healthy interest in Zo's condition resurfacesAlthough the man certainly will be missed at the start of Heat camp, some of the moments will not. Too much heartbreak these past few Octobers. Too little hope these past three years. Already last week, Nets coach Byron Scott was dealing with questions regarding Alonzo Mourning's health, about how much could be expected from the veteran center in light of his ongoing kidney illness. "Twenty, 25 minutes a game is what I'm looking for right now and nothing else besides that," said Scott, whose front office gambled $22 million over four seasons on Mourning on this summer's free-agent market. "I think we would all be kind of crazy to think that Zo's going to play every single game. "If we can get him where he's playing 50, 60 games and he's in unbelievable shape getting to the playoffs, that's what I'm looking for." By the end of his Heat tenure, inquiries into his health began to wear on Mourning. It is a lesson Scott already has learned. "He came in here right after Labor Day, on Sept. 2, and we started working with him," Scott said to a group of reporters last week at the Nets' practice facility in East Rutherford, N.J. "And I found myself asking him, `How do you feel?' And what I found out the next day is that he didn't like that. He'd give me a look like, `I'm fine.' "He's heard that question for three or four years. He's to the point where he's sick of it. It's almost like showing him pity, and he doesn't want pity." Via South Florida Sun-Sentinel Read the Full Story Discuss Send Feedback Buy Tickets Nets Sep 2003 Archive
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