Nice, quiet summer the Nets just spent, wasn't it? They could have spent it in hiding after blowing a nine-point lead with less than nine minutes to play in Game 6 of the NBA Finals - less than nine minutes from a roll-of-the-dice Game 7 - replaying the tape over and over in their minds, if not on their televisions.

"But," to quote the late John Belushi, "Nooooo!" They spiced their already frenzied quest to re-sign Jason Kidd by picking up Alonzo Mourning along the way, then extinguished a last-minute firestorm and made a shoestring catch to keep Kidd after reports of a Kidd-Byron Scott rift surfaced.

Assistant coaches Eddie Jordan and Mike O'Koren departed for Washington. A less-than-maxed-out, contract-extension offer got Kenyon Martin's dander up - and then he was mentioned in trade rumors. After coaching the Nets to two straight Finals appearances, Scott didn't even get a contract extension offer and now enters this season a lame duck.

And, oh yeah, the team is for sale and could eventually leave New Jersey.

Not exactly the NBA's equivalent of "a quiet week in Lake Woebegon," as public radio storyteller-author Garrison Keilor would put it.