No Sleep Till Brooklyn: The Problem With The Nets

Interesting read on Grantland today arguing that the Brooklyn Nets have utterly failed in building their roster for the upcoming season. Even though I classified the Nets’ offseason as a success in a post last week, I am inclined to agree with that sentiment. This may seem asinine on every level, but hear my out for a second…on paper, Brooklyn did everything right short of landing Dwight Howard. This might seem like a rather substantial caveat, but once it was clear that the Howard deal was dead (for now) you could argue the Nets made all the right decisions, retaining both Brook Lopez and Kris Humphries. To get D-12, the Nets would likely have had to part with both Lopez and Humphries as well as young talent MarShon Brooks, a truckload of draft picks, and likely a few other players to boot. On paper (there’s that pesky phrase once again), the Nets appear to have at least 7 legitimate NBA players in those 3 guys, Gerald Wallace, CJ Watson, Deron Williams, and Joe Johnson. How those pieces will actually mesh on the court is another question entirely.

Without Howard, the Nets are now basically a team full of "assets."

1 of the things the Grantland column did a great job of pointing out is that teams who are attempting to rebuild always talk about acquiring assets, but over the past few years Brooklyn maybe did this more literally than any basketball team in NBA history. Their roster has been made up of perfectly fine players who no doubt would make another team better by fulfilling a specific need through a trade. This was partially how they got Williams and how they planned on getting Howard. (Johnson was more of a case of another team trying to shed salary to start their own rebuilding era, and the Nets being a willing partner.)

Without Howard, the Nets should be a deeper team in theory. That’s even considering the facts that Wallace is overpaid and Lopez seems to be injury-prone. In terms of actual basketball (even if their skills of some are declining), Brooklyn’s role players should all be serviceable though. The real questions lie in the superstars themselves.

“Superstar,” much like “asset,” is probably a word that gets thrown around too often these days. There’s a generation of ultra-talented players carrying around the superstar tag who have basically done nothing in their careers up to this point. Even prior to this past season Dwyane Wade had been the best player on a team that won a championship, and LeBron James had won 2 MVP’s, been to 2 NBA Finals, and 2 other Conference Finals series. What exactly have any of the players on this list done: Williams, Johnson, Howard, Chris Paul, and Carmelo Anthony? The correct answer is “nothing.”

Williams may have a world of talent, but his teams don't have much to show for it as of right now.

Williams and Paul are numbers 1 and 2 in some order on everyone’s list of the best point guards in the league, but by my count they have only 2 Conference Finals appearances between them. D-Will put up great numbers in 2011-2012, and yet he couldn’t keep them from losing 2 out of every 3 of their games. Does that sound like a superstar to you? And by now most savvy basketball people know that Johnson’s hype is mainly a function of his playing in Phoenix’s run-and-shoot system alongside Steve Nash during his formative years.

I wonder if Johnson would ever admit that he made a mistake leaving the Suns for the money and the chance to be the lead dog.

The most interesting case is Howard, who is capable of putting up monster numbers (23 points, 14 boards, and nearly 2.5 blocks a game 2 seasons ago) despite not really knowing how to score or shoot a free throw. A few years ago, he was only a couple games from an NBA title, but that still seems fishy to me…yes, he was their best player, but I could argue that Orlando’s system and ability to shoot 3’s was an even greater factor in their success…and yet you can’t play that style to begin with without Howard manning the paint.

With Howard, the Nets would have been the ultimate video game team next year. I can envision playing NBA 2K13 slashing and creating with Williams while Johnson is spotting up behind the 3 point line knocking down wide open jumpers, and Howard cleaning up all the misses and protecting the rim at the other end. Even without Howard, Brooklyn still has a lot of “assets,” and all this speculation might turn out looking foolish…either that, or the Nets will merely be the best fantasy basketball team of all time.