Can the N.J. Nets succeed with the 'Princeton offense'?

A few miles down the road in Trenton there is a sign on a bridge that reads "Trenton Makes, The World Takes."

That saying is now being adopted by Princeton athletics. After all, Michigan took the designs on our football helmets. The American national lacrosse team fills its roster with Tigers made by Coach Tierney. And now, the New Jersey Nets of the NBA are taking the offense born and bred by Princeton basketball coaches.

In running the "Princeton offense," the Tigers use a complicated series of cuts and slants by the players without the ball to get a guy open for a three pointer, or hit a man breaking toward the basket with a quick back-door pass leading to a lay-up.

"The Princeton offense is tough in the beginning because there is a lot to learn," said Will Venable, a freshman on Princeton's team.

He is right. It is indeed a difficult system to learn, and the skeptics say that this style of play can only work for a group of extremely well disciplined players without any individual athleticism or ambition for personal glory.

The very athletic Nets are seeing if that is true.

This season, Jason Kidd, Kerry Kittles and company have been trying out the Princeton offense — and more impressively, the squad has found it to work.

Twenty games into the 2001-02 campaign, the Nets are a respectable 13-7, top of the Atlantic division, and — maybe most importantly for them — 2 games ahead of mid-town rivals, the New York Knicks.

The Princeton system was brought to the Nets by head coach Byron Scott and assistant Eddie Jordan. They both learned it while working alongside former Princeton head coach Pete Carril when they were all assistant coaches with the Sacramento Kings.

And only two weeks ago, Steve Goodrich '98 joined the Nets as a free agent. He has been in and out of the NBA over the last season, and he may get his chance to stay under the lights as long as this offense that he knows so well remains successful.

Nobody really knows if it will remain successful because the "Princeton offense" has never been used with a team as athletic as New Jersey. A Tiger fan can only dream about how many back-door passes and threes Jason Kidd and Kerry Kittles could have executed had they both been on the same Princeton squad five years ago — and against shabby Ivy defense, no less.

With Princeton's system, the Nets now have the athleticism and skills to reinvent a whole new offensive style in the NBA. What will probably determine its success is the capability of teams to adjust to the Nets' new Ivy League look, and also the discipline of some of the New Jersey stars who might want a little more glory of their own.

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Granted, this offense would likely never work for a team like the 76ers, which bases its attack on one-on-one situations between superstar Allen Iverson and his defender. But, for lower budget or expansion teams without huge offensive threats, this could become a feasible alternative.

...The current Tiger basketball team is happy with the idea. "You see the New Jersey Nets doing it, and it's definitely successful and it works," sophomore forward Andre Logan said. "Will it work for other teams more than their own offense, I don't know, but it works for us."