Nets veteran guard Joe Johnson doesn't know how the roster will change next season. But he does believe that it will be quite different.
His team finished under .500 and lost in the first round of the playoffs despite boasting such talent as Johnson, Brook Lopez and Deron Williams. The Nets simply didn't mesh.
"I don't see us coming back as the same team," Johnson told the New York Daily News. "This is my third year here. I could see if we were getting better each year, but it's been kind of the opposite. So to not even be a .500 ball club in the East, it's disheartening and I don't know. I think everyone in the locker room is unsure of the future here."
The Nets have no cap space and pick 29th in the draft. Lopez and Thaddeus Young appear destined for free agency. Johnson could be traded. So could Williams, whom coach Lionel Hollins recently claimed is not worthy of a max contract.
Hollins was still complaining Saturday.
"I thought we had a higher basketball IQ as a group than we did," he said. "That was a big thing. I thought we had more toughness and all of that. But as a coach, looking from the outside, that's what I always say until you come in and coach a team you don't know for sure. I thought the skill level was better ... but we worked around it and that's part of coaching."
Williams declined to to speak to the media as he and his teammates gathered their bags and took off.
