Early Winners, Losers from Brooklyn Nets' NBA Preseason
Three games, three wins—but do any of them mean anything?
The Brooklyn Nets have started off their preseason about as well as they could've hoped, notching a victory in every game. The opponents haven't exactly been top-notch, though.
The opener was a route over Maccabi Tel Aviv to start the season. The next two came against an actual NBA team, the Sacramento Kings, but each of those contests was held in China. The Nets have yet to play an NBA team on NBA soil, free of jet lag.
But even if this squad had beaten up on the Cleveland Cavaliers, San Antonio Spurs and Oklahoma City Thunder on the road in three straight games, there would still be question marks.
That's the beauty of the preseason: Both wins and losses become frustratingly undefinable,and thus you can always justify a fixation on either the flaws or the perfection. Like every other team, the Nets fit somewhere between those two categories.
Here's a look at their preseason winners and losers through the first couple weeks of the exhibition season.
Winner & Loser: Brook Lopez's Foot
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Health kind of matters with this team: When its two best players spend most of a season either on the sidelines or hobbled with injuries, that tends to become a talking point heading into the next year.
Deron Williams saw his production plummet without any ankles in 2013-14, while Brook Lopez experienced his second major foot injury in three years.
Ankles and feet: Those are two parts of the body considered relatively important in playing basketball, and unfortunately for basketball players, those injuries tend to reoccur.
The problem for the Nets though is that this is quickly turning into a loser with the announcement that Lopez will miss 10-to-14 days with a right foot injury. That's the same foot which kept him out last season.
The good news: The Nets called it a "mild right midfoot sprain," as Marc Spears of Yahoo! Sports tweeted. That means no immediate injury to the bone.
The bad news: A guy who has a history of foot injuries just suffered another foot injury. Lopez has played in only 96 games over the past three years. If this bleeds into the regular season, the Nets will have serious problems once again.
After spending most of the previous season rehabbing his right foot and eventually having a separate surgery on his left ankle, Lopez has dropped about 15 pounds since last playing a regular-season game.
The Nets center isn't healthy, but at this point, an injury expected merely to keep him out for the preseason isn't the worst news for this team.
Loser: Brook Lopez's Mobility
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It's not all good. Is it ever?
Lopez looks no slower than he was before—that's the good news. From an injury standpoint, the athleticism seems to have returned to someone who never had much to spare in the first place.
But how about those 15 pounds, Brook?
The interesting twist to the Nets' new offense: With everyone moving more, Lopez moves too.
Normally, the Nets' center doesn't stray too far from the basket. He has a bevy of post moves he likes to use at his discretion; he maybe holds a wider array of under-the-basket moves than any other player in the league.
Now he's straying a little more. He's coming to the top of the key to set on-ball screens and darting back to the hoop.
Lopez has some skill outside the paint but probably isn't going to turn into a consistent pop guy. He can, however, learn to affect the game in other ways away from the basket, threatening to draw the defense into the paint as he rolls to the hoop.
At the moment though, he doesn't look any quicker than he has before, which means defenses can take time to recover with him, lingering around ball-handlers for a split second longer, which can make all the difference in the world when defending high on-ball screens.
Winner: New Schemes
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With all the talk around town about the New York Knicks implementing the triangle offense, you'd think they were the only organization in the NBA trying out a new offensive scheme. In reality, they're not even the only team in their own city doing it.
With Lionel Hollins coming to town, the Nets are working on the motion offense. Through three preseason games, it's working.
As the NetsDaily Twitter account noted, Brooklyn is handling its switch a little smoother than the team across the bridge: "#Nets (motion) and Knicks (triangle) have both installed new offenses. So far, Nets averaging 112.3 ppg, Knicks 85.5."
The Nets are moving off the ball and running far more flex cuts than they did last season along with plenty of pick-and-rolls. Jarrett Jack is already showing he can make an impact both as a primary and secondary ball-handler.
Also, it doesn't hurt that when all these shooters are getting open, they're actually making their shots, which is partly why rookie Bojan Bogdanovic will slot in nicely as a starter. The Nets are draining 41 percent of their threes thus far.
Winner: Deron Williams' Ankles
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Undergoing one ankle surgery is bad; having two is often permanently damaging.
It appeared that was going to be the case with Williams last season when he played out what was likely the worst year of his NBA career and finished it with offseason surgery on both ankles.
With three more years on a max deal, Williams' contract looks like a vast overpay. And through only three preseason games, it'd be overreacting to predict any major changes from the previous year.
So let's be hypocritical, because Williams has looked great in those contests.
He's shooting confidently. He's cutting precisely, something we didn't see when he was playing with those two bum ankles a season ago. As part of Hollins' newly installed offense, he's running more pick-and-rolls than he ever has as a Net.
Last season, he'd often pull up or back out of his dribble and start a new play when bouncing around screens. It's completely possible he didn't feel like he had the explosion to take advantage of small openings in a defense. Now his decisiveness is noticeable.
Of course, defenses are still in the learning process of the preseason (plus, the Kings and Maccabi Tel Aviv aren't exactly Bill Russell's Celtics). Naturally talented offensive players can often look impressive in exhibition games, especially when one contest is against a non-NBA team and the other two are played in China.
This could mean absolutely nothing; we could get the same D-Will as we saw last season. That's completely plausible. For now, we don't know, but through three games Nets fans have to consider his progress a positive from last year.
Loser: China
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The NBA had two preseason games scheduled in the most populated country in the world, a nation that just so happens to love basketball. And which teams did it decide to send for this year's slate?
The Brooklyn Nets and the Sacramento Kings.
It makes sense that the league would want to spread the wealth and give different organizations an opportunity to travel to China each year. Last year's choices actually corresponded to popularity and quality basketball: the Los Angeles Lakers and Golden State Warriors.
There were stars to market. Kobe Bryant was top-three in worldwide jersey sales before the 2013-14 season began. Stephen Curry is a young superstar who is hyper-marketable if only because pretty much everything about him is likable; Curry eventually finished last season with a top-five-selling jersey.
The Warriors and Lakers are both premier franchises with large fanbases.
But Kings-Nets? Neither of those teams has a player with a top-selling jersey from last season. Not even Williams or DeMarcus Cousins makes the cut.
The Nets, meanwhile, lingered to seventh in team merchandise sales in 2013-14, down from fourth the previous season and still reaping some of the benefits from a team move and logo change only a few years ago.
Even The Los Angeles Times wrote, "Ticket scalpers found this year’s matchup between the lackluster Kings and Nets didn’t command the same sky-high prices as previous games featuring the L.A. Lakers or Miami Heat."
The formerly New Jersey Nets actually went to China during the preseason only four years ago. The Knicks have never gone. Neither have the defending champion San Antonio Spurs. Or the Dallas Mavericks. Or the Chicago Bulls.
A Kings-Nets matchup didn't make as much sense for the league as sending a pair of more marketable teams, even if one franchise with a Russian owner playing another with an Indian one is congruent with the NBA's plans to expand in Asia.
When so many NBA teams and franchises out there scream "marketability", it was a strange pick for the NBA, which brands itself better than any other major American sports league.
Fred Katz averaged almost one point per game in fifth grade but maintains that his per-36-minute numbers were astonishing. Find more of his work at WashingtonPost.com or on ESPN's TrueHoop Network at ClipperBlog.com. Follow him on Twitter at @FredKatz.
Unless otherwise noted, all statistics are current as of Oct. 13 and are courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com and NBA.com.
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