PJ Carlesimo Unhappy With Scheduling of 8-Game Road Trip for Brooklyn Nets


According to PJ Carlesimo, the gruelling 8-game trip the Brooklyn Nets are about to embark on is “perplexing”. The head coach is not pleased that the circus has kicked the Nets out of their own building for such a lengthy amount of time, this late in the season. Per the NY Daily News: “It took the franchise 36 years to get its own arena, and in the first season it embarks on the longest road trip in its history starting Monday – a 17-day, eight-game excursion across the United States while the Ringling Bros. circus pitches a tent at the Barclays Center. ‘Perplexing is a good word,’ Nets coach PJ Carlesimo said. Carlesimo endured the rodeo trip for five seasons as an assistant with the Spurs, but he was quick to point out the reasons why Brooklyn’s predicament is worse: unlike the Spurs’ trip, the Nets’ road trip is near the end of the season. Six of the eight games are in the Western Conference, by far the deeper and better of the conferences. This kind of lengthy trip will be an annual tradition, but next year the burden eases because the circus arrives in February instead of March. ‘What’s very, very difficult about this is the timing,’ Carlesimo said. ‘When you get to this point and you realize you’ve got eight straight road games or whatever it is, six against the west, it’s far from an ideal situation. But when it’s all said and done, we all will have played 82 games but this is not the way you want to play it. This is not the way you want it to happen.'”