Winning eight of their last 11 games, the New Jersey Nets are turning a mediocre season around. Powered by great play from Richard Jefferson and Jason Kidd, the Nets find themselves over .500 and are a few wins away from getting themselves into fourth place in conference. Right now, there’s a three way tie for that spot, with Washington and Toronto. However, neither one of those teams are playing nearly as well as the Nets as of late.

With the team playing so strongly as of late, the rumors of Jason Kidd being dealt have suddenly disappeared. The same thing goes for the deal between the Jazz and Nets, which got barely a blurb in the Salt Lake Tribune earlier this week. What does all of this mean? Maybe this team is starting to come together. It took them long enough, but there’s still plenty of basketball left to be playing and this team may be starting to develop the chemistry needed to set them apart from the rest of the mediocre Eastern Conference.

A few notes from a few papers and sites covering the Nets…

The Bergen Record reports that Marcus Williams may be sent to a developmental league to get back into playing shape…

Averaging 1.3 PPG in nine games and playing less than 10 minutes a game will do that. The way Darrell Armstrong has looked off the bench since the new year started has been much better than how he started the season and with the way Kidd has been playing all season, it looks like Williams is the odd man out. Maybe some time with some scrubs will get him back on the right track. Armstrong may be the backup point guard right now, but in the long run, Williams is going to have to step up his game and become everything the Nets expected him to be when they drafted him in the first round almost two seasons ago.

The Salt Lake Tribune reports that the Jazz are unlikely to deal Richard Jefferson for Andrei Kirilenko straight up because Utah has plenty of swing man type players that can fill the role that Jefferson would…

Last time I checked, there weren’t many players in the league that are averaging almost 25 points a game and I got more news for everybody…if the Nets stay over .500 and start to get contributions from the bench on a more consistent basis, the chances of seeing a trade could reduce drastically.

The Sporting News recently did a Q & A with Jefferson. It’s a pretty solid read and definitely worth checking out:

Jefferson: The latest in lean mean scoring machines