When you're a Net you're a Net all the way, from your first broken bone to your last air-ball trey. When you're a Net you're a Net all the way, be you Jayson or Kenyon or Yinka Dare. Or poor Michael Ray. Or old Dr. J.

	Rookie Kenyon Martin comes to the Nets and the tragedy continues.

With heartfelt apologies to Stephen Sondheim...

But even the creative, prolific Sondheim might have trouble coming up with a fitting libretto and score for the turbulent running tragedy that is the New Jersey Nets. And this is a guy who wrote musicals about a murderous barber (Sweeney Todd) and presidential killers (Assassins). Maybe Stephen King should get the contract.

Once again, the Nets lived up to their infamous history this season. Lots of players got hurt, some in a bizarre fashion. The team lost. Fans stayed away. They installed a new president, a new coach, had the No. 1 pick in the draft and it still went awry. You have to wonder if there really is something sinister going on down there. Then again, you have to wonder why they're down there in the first place. Isn't Louisville feeling rejected about now?

To catalog the woes that have afflicted the Nets this season is no easy task. If it were an aberration, or even a small pattern, it would be one thing. It isn't. It's a continuum with no end in sight. The franchise which gave us Darryl Dawkins requesting to go into a game after fouling out, and which gave us Chris Morris writing the words 'Trade Me' and 'Please' on each of his sneakers, is still in utter chaos.

About this time last year, the Nets were again careening to another lottery finish. But soon they'd win the damn thing and get Kenyon Martin! Aha, times were changing! Or so they might have thought. They got a new president in the capable Rod Thorn, who hired the much-sought-after Byron Scott to be the team's 10th head coach in the last 14 years. There was some hope that maybe Jayson Williams, their All-Star center, and Kerry Kittles, their ailing shooting guard, would be back to join Martin, Keith Van Horn and Stephon Marbury. That would be a pretty nifty lineup and still is -- on paper.

	Van Horn

	Harris

	Kittles

You already know this story. Scott started his first game with four of his top nine players hors de combat. And we're not even counting Williams, who had to retire. Van Horn was out with a broken leg. Lucious Harris had a hernia. Jamie Feick had an Achilles' tear. He was merely the team's best rebounder last season. He lasted six whole games this year and then went back on the injured list.

And Kittles? He was unable to go -- and still hasn't come back. He may never come back. The Nets' bad luck was exacerbated when the team tried to get injury exemptions for Williams and Kittles and was denied both times.

Through this season, Marbury has persevered to the point where he managed to get himself a gig with the Eastern Conference All-Stars. But that has been about it. Martin broke his leg again last week against the Celtics and is gone for the year. The break isn't as severe as the last one, last year, we're told. It happened on an innocent collision with Milt Palacio, the man who beat the Nets in December with a steal and diving three-pointer as time expired, an improbable ending against anyone but the Nets.

	Gill

	Douglas

When Marbury was sidelined for a couple games, Sherman Douglas went wire-to-wire on consecutive games -- and then broke his thumb. The Nets had to sign Doug Overton to replace Douglas -- and he promptly dislocated a finger in his first game. In addition to not having Martin, Douglas, Feick or Kittles, Jersey also been without Jim McIlvaine and Kendall Gill for significant stretches.

You have to wonder about all this. But when it's the Nets, it's the norm. This is a franchise which lost a center (Even Eschmeyer) when he tore a muscle lifting weights at home. It lost Drazen Petrovic in the most tragic of all circumstances, a fatal car crash. You'd need at least 15 items for a Top Ten Net Disaster Stories.

Seasoned Net observers -- yes, there are a few -- are inured to all this. They had to make certain there was no Net involved in the Mir Spacecraft landing. This is a franchise which once saw its owner hit by a bag of ice and which still is defined by four memorable words out of the mouth of Derrick Coleman: "Whoop de damn do."

That was Coleman's assessment of an off-the-court incident involving Kenny Anderson. That also summarized Coleman's whole approach to everything. You may recall he gave then-coach Butch Beard a blank check when Beard notified the players that they would be fined for not adhering to a dress code.

You're fighting a historical rip tide when you try to make sense of the Nets. At one time or another, three of the top college coaches in the game -- Rick Pitino, Jim Valvano and Rollie Massimino -- were coming aboard. Massimino actually agreed to take the job, then stiffed the team the morning of the announcement. Another college coach, John Calipari, did get the Nets into the playoffs even though he once sent four players out of a timeout to defend the Michael Jordan-led Chicago Bulls.

This is a team which drafted Dennis Hopson, Dare, Ed O'Bannon and traded Mookie Blaylock for Rumeal Robinson. It had both Benoit Benjamin and Joe Barry Carroll. It had the unfortunate but gifted Michael Ray Richardson, one of the first victims of the NBA's war on drugs. This is a team which, despite a changing cast of players over the years, has been either last or next-to-last in field goal percentage five times in the last eight years and is a spiffy 27th this season.

Next fall, another season will begin and the Nets, hardy perennials that they are, will be back for more. Martin should be fine. Kittles may even be ready for a comeback. Another lottery pick will be on display. There will be the obligatory optimism even though the team has had one winning season in the last seven years and has not won a playoff series since 1984. There will be the obligatory talk about a fresh start, a different season, and the new faces.

Calipari called it "changing the culture" but he couldn't do it. Don Casey couldn't do it. Beard couldn't do it. Scott hasn't done it. The culture is ingrained, far beyond the poor power of mere Homo sapiens. The Nets will know they've arrived when Tony Soprano starts showing up at courtside. Until then, keep the splints, bandages and voodoo chants handy.

Peter May, who covers the NBA for the Boston Globe, is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.