The Brooklyn Nets Are Here To Stay
The modern NBA has hammered home many new ways of thinking about the game, but perhaps the most universally agreed upon mindset is that you need superstars to compete for championships, and if you don't have a superstar, you better get one by tanking through the draft. Like any strategy, everything works and everything doesn't. The Philadelphia 76ers tanked their hearts out for five years and are now a juggernaut sporting three top-20 players in Hakeem Olajuwon-clone Joel Embiid, nightly triple-double threat Ben Simmons and the ferocious Jimmy Butler. Then there are the Orlando Magic, who have been drifting in a subdued land of nothingness ever since trading Dwight Howard in 2012.
When a team lacking a superstar decides to jump the gun by siphoning off all their quality players in return for improved chances at a high draft pick, they are taking a risk that they can become the next 76ers, and not the next Magic. Sometimes staying in the middle can yield success as well. After trading their aging Big 3 of KG, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen, the Celtics never fully bottomed out, and now they have Kyrie Irving, Al Horford, Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum to show for it. After losing their Lob City (RIP) core of Blake Griffin, Chris Paul and DeAndre Jordan, the Clippers decided to stack their team with waves of quality veterans and are currently in the thick of the West playoff race, and, more importantly, have the inside track to sign superstar Kawhi Leonard this summer. Then there are teams such as the Charlotte Hornets, who have refused to tank for years and are wasting poor Kemba Walker's prime away for the 3,000th season in a row. Again, everything works, and everything doesn't. Ultimately, when faced with a crossroads, teams took alternate routes. Some succeeded and some failed. That's life.
Which brings us to the Nets, who in 2012 were on the receiving end of the Celtics' offloading of KG and Paul Pierce. In return for the Celtics' aging players, the Nets unloaded all of their first round picks until 2019, which turned out to be possibly the most crushing and short-sighted trade of the last decade. The man who made that trade for the Nets, former general manager Billy King, has not been seen since and could be in hiding for all we know. I wouldn't blame the man.
But in between that fateful trade and the present day, the Nets were not given a choice. They were paralyzed. Absent a superstar, they were never going to win big, but they also didn't own their lottery picks, therefor prohibiting them from drafting players such as Tatum and Brown who could have streamlined their rebuild. In the face of unenviable options, the Nets honestly took the best route they could under the circumstances, hiring Spurs assistant GM Sean Marks (fun fact- half of the league's GM's are former Spurs employees. Don't fact check that) and coach Kenny Atkinson. Lacking any substantive trade chips, the Nets accepted their fate, taking wild chances in restricted free agency and playing a turbo-charged up-tempo offense that launched threes at a rate that rivaled only the analytically driven Houston Rockets.
The Nets were not exactly fun to watch, but they weren't some abomination either. Yet slowly but surely, through shrewd front office moves and opportunistic coaching, the Nets were accumulating honest-to-goodness respectable NBA players. Signing Spencer Dinwiddie and Joe Harris off the NBA's scrap heap look like strokes of genius in retrospect. Dinwiddie, a reliable distributor and occasionally lights out scorer, is one of the best backup guards in the league and is averaging 17.1 points and 5 assists per game. Harris is shooting a blistering 47% beyond the arc and starts for them.
I could go on all day. Before dislocating his ankle, Caris LeVert looked like one of the league's next young stars; a two-way player who could shoot, penetrate, defend and pass. Marks drafted him with a pick he acquired for journeyman Thaddeus Young. Jarrett Allen, a 2017 late round pick, has been a blocking machine who figures to anchor the team's defense for the next decade. Trading for the embattled D'Angelo Russell before last season has started to pan out big time, with the 4th-year guard exploding for 23.2 points and 7.4 assists on 50/43/92 splits in the month of January.
Marks was dealt, to put it bluntly, an atrocious hand courtesy of his predecessor Billy King, but he accepted the situation he was put in and proceeded to build a strong culture through hiring the well-regarded Atkinson and compiling some real young talent. This summer, the Nets have gobs of cap space, their own 1st round pick and a good half dozen players already on board. And while it's no guarantee that the Nets will find any star willing to sign, the fact that they're even in the conversation is its own achievement.
Teams, GM's, coaches and players always gush about the importance of culture, and while much of that is fluff, having a strong culture is one of the most important traits an organization could ask for. Brooklyn has it, and as cheesy as it sounds, having a good culture can help a middling team make the leap as opposed to being stuck in purgatory for ages.
Alas, in the NBA, nothing is given. If I told you last season that LeBron, Kawhi, Boogie Cousins and Jimmy Butler had changed teams, you probably would have laughed. There is still a great chance that the Nets have capped out. They may be an awesome 17-5 in their last 22 games, but they still lack a superstar and have been too good to merit a high draft pick this June. After all the misery the franchise has endured, they could still be stuck in place like the Hornets and Pistons of the world. But this feels different. With Lavert, Russell, Dinwiddie, Allen and Harris, the Nets have an actual path toward something greater. But you still need at least one superstar to win big in this league, and until the Nets acquire or develop one, they could be forced to undergo a full-on tear down, which would be depressingly ironic.
When a team lacking a superstar decides to jump the gun by siphoning off all their quality players in return for improved chances at a high draft pick, they are taking a risk that they can become the next 76ers, and not the next Magic. Sometimes staying in the middle can yield success as well. After trading their aging Big 3 of KG, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen, the Celtics never fully bottomed out, and now they have Kyrie Irving, Al Horford, Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum to show for it. After losing their Lob City (RIP) core of Blake Griffin, Chris Paul and DeAndre Jordan, the Clippers decided to stack their team with waves of quality veterans and are currently in the thick of the West playoff race, and, more importantly, have the inside track to sign superstar Kawhi Leonard this summer. Then there are teams such as the Charlotte Hornets, who have refused to tank for years and are wasting poor Kemba Walker's prime away for the 3,000th season in a row. Again, everything works, and everything doesn't. Ultimately, when faced with a crossroads, teams took alternate routes. Some succeeded and some failed. That's life.
Which brings us to the Nets, who in 2012 were on the receiving end of the Celtics' offloading of KG and Paul Pierce. In return for the Celtics' aging players, the Nets unloaded all of their first round picks until 2019, which turned out to be possibly the most crushing and short-sighted trade of the last decade. The man who made that trade for the Nets, former general manager Billy King, has not been seen since and could be in hiding for all we know. I wouldn't blame the man.
But in between that fateful trade and the present day, the Nets were not given a choice. They were paralyzed. Absent a superstar, they were never going to win big, but they also didn't own their lottery picks, therefor prohibiting them from drafting players such as Tatum and Brown who could have streamlined their rebuild. In the face of unenviable options, the Nets honestly took the best route they could under the circumstances, hiring Spurs assistant GM Sean Marks (fun fact- half of the league's GM's are former Spurs employees. Don't fact check that) and coach Kenny Atkinson. Lacking any substantive trade chips, the Nets accepted their fate, taking wild chances in restricted free agency and playing a turbo-charged up-tempo offense that launched threes at a rate that rivaled only the analytically driven Houston Rockets.
The Nets were not exactly fun to watch, but they weren't some abomination either. Yet slowly but surely, through shrewd front office moves and opportunistic coaching, the Nets were accumulating honest-to-goodness respectable NBA players. Signing Spencer Dinwiddie and Joe Harris off the NBA's scrap heap look like strokes of genius in retrospect. Dinwiddie, a reliable distributor and occasionally lights out scorer, is one of the best backup guards in the league and is averaging 17.1 points and 5 assists per game. Harris is shooting a blistering 47% beyond the arc and starts for them.
I could go on all day. Before dislocating his ankle, Caris LeVert looked like one of the league's next young stars; a two-way player who could shoot, penetrate, defend and pass. Marks drafted him with a pick he acquired for journeyman Thaddeus Young. Jarrett Allen, a 2017 late round pick, has been a blocking machine who figures to anchor the team's defense for the next decade. Trading for the embattled D'Angelo Russell before last season has started to pan out big time, with the 4th-year guard exploding for 23.2 points and 7.4 assists on 50/43/92 splits in the month of January.
Marks was dealt, to put it bluntly, an atrocious hand courtesy of his predecessor Billy King, but he accepted the situation he was put in and proceeded to build a strong culture through hiring the well-regarded Atkinson and compiling some real young talent. This summer, the Nets have gobs of cap space, their own 1st round pick and a good half dozen players already on board. And while it's no guarantee that the Nets will find any star willing to sign, the fact that they're even in the conversation is its own achievement.
Teams, GM's, coaches and players always gush about the importance of culture, and while much of that is fluff, having a strong culture is one of the most important traits an organization could ask for. Brooklyn has it, and as cheesy as it sounds, having a good culture can help a middling team make the leap as opposed to being stuck in purgatory for ages.
Alas, in the NBA, nothing is given. If I told you last season that LeBron, Kawhi, Boogie Cousins and Jimmy Butler had changed teams, you probably would have laughed. There is still a great chance that the Nets have capped out. They may be an awesome 17-5 in their last 22 games, but they still lack a superstar and have been too good to merit a high draft pick this June. After all the misery the franchise has endured, they could still be stuck in place like the Hornets and Pistons of the world. But this feels different. With Lavert, Russell, Dinwiddie, Allen and Harris, the Nets have an actual path toward something greater. But you still need at least one superstar to win big in this league, and until the Nets acquire or develop one, they could be forced to undergo a full-on tear down, which would be depressingly ironic.
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