Lawrence Frank was coaching the Nets when the announcement first came in 2003-04 about the intended move to Brooklyn. He was still in New Jersey when the ground was broken and the first shovel of dirt came out of the earth.
So he finally got to coach in Brooklyn last night. Of course, he did so with the young and improving Pistons. And frankly, the wait hardly seemed worth it as the Pistons suffered a heart-breaking, 107-105, double-overtime defeat as the Nets rode Joe Johnson's step-back 23-footer at the final buzzer.
"We just came up short," said Frank. "The bottom line is this: We had numerous opportunities with this and we just fell one play short."
So with the move complete, the roster revamped, a terrific building in place, Frank is in Detroit. Despite the long, often brilliant, ultimately disappointing stint he had with the Nets, Frank admitted there was a totally different feel and vibe around his one-time team.
"It does feel different — even last year when [the Pistons played] in Newark," said Frank, who actually had been at Barclays Center before — he attended the arena-opening Jay-Z concert. "There's been unbelievable turnover. The only guy I coached on this team was Brook [Lopez]. And that was last year as well."
The Nets hardly did Frank a favor — they brought Lopez back from a seven-game foot-injury absence to play against his Pistons. Lopez, Frank said, is "one of the top centers in the league." So Frank joked about wanting to bribe him with DisneyWorld passes to skip one more game.
Frank, who replaced Byron Scott in the 2003-04 season — around the time the team was sold to Bruce Ratner — eventually was canned after an 0-16 start in 2009-10. But for almost all of his tenure, Brooklyn seemed like a dream. He admitted the move was "bittersweet" because he's a born and bred Jersey guy.
"Obviously, when you're from a place and you lose a team there are some bittersweet feelings yet at the same time, I saw the sweat equity that was put in," Frank said. "It was just a vision that came to reality. Give a lot of credit to Bruce Ratner. He stayed the course when many people thought this project would never happen. And then you had the economic crisis, he stayed with it. And this is a beautiful building. It's good for the league. It's good for the Nets."
There was a familiarity of sorts for Frank. Only Lopez remains from his last Nets roster, but the joint was filled with friends among Nets execs.
"The team was turned over quickly so your connection is to all the people that work for the team," said Frank, who coached a franchise-best 225 NBA wins. "[Team execs] and all the people that were here, those are the guys that there is still a special connection with because of 10 years here. But playing here is just playing against another team but there still is a connection with the people around it."
fred.kerber@nypost.com
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