Cuzoogle

By Andy Charles

While the Toronto Raptors continue to fight for their playoff lives in the Eastern Conference, playing well one night and shockingly the next, at least one team in the division has had something to celebrate properly this week.

Celebrate might not be the first word the New Jersey Nets were coming up with on Monday, though, when they won their 10th game of the season to avoid the ignominy of being cast as the worst team in NBA history.

That honour is still going to belong to the 1973 Philadelphia 76ers and Fred Carter for at least another year, but looking ahead to next year is there a chance according to NBA Betting that these Nets could be one of the most improved teams in the league’s long history?

Sure, 10-65 looks like no sign of hope, but this Nets team has at least as much talent as the Raptors on the face of things, so what has gone wrong for them?

Well injuries have played a part, since almost all of their starters have been down for some spell of the season apart from Brook Lopez, and their coaching was lacking a little inspiration earlier on…now Kiki Vandeweghe has taken over, results have definitely improved.

Now for the future…

The big name Nets fans are waiting for is not a player or a coach, it’s a new owner in Mikhail Prokhorov, a Russian billionaire of the like Chelsea Football Club in England has been bankrolled by for the last decade.

Prokhorov is certainly a match for Roman Abramovich, and his money seems likely to attract a different class of player to New Jersey next season, and then Brooklyn down the line when the team moves in 2013 – who knows what star players will be wearing a Nets jersey by then.

Although the Nets still want to defy the NBA Odds and catch Minnesota , thus avoid having the worst record in the league, they are going to have a decent chance at the No 1 pick in the 2010 draft, most likely to be super-guard John Wall from the Kentucky Wildcats, as well through the lottery.

Maybe the top top names (LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, our own Chris Bosh) won’t want to go there, but there will be plenty of names looking to join the likes of Lopez, Devin Harris and Courtney Lee to transform the Nets into a team that could even be a playoff contender as early as 2011.

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