Are Brooklyn Nets Ready to Blow Up Overpriced Core?
It's a tale almost as old Mikhail Prokhorov's NBA ownership tenure.
The Brooklyn Nets are overpaying for an on-court product that has already reached its apex. Their core is a goulash of aging, cap-clogging veterans, their supporting cast is a revolving door of uncelebrated journeymen and the occasional draft or overseas prospect.
Talk of detonating this pricey foundation—prevalent though it was last year—has given way to resignation. The Nets don't appear to be sellers actively looking for a way out of the nigh-bottomless money pit they're tangled within. Rather, they're like any other Eastern Conference team that isn't a genuine championship contender, trying to justify their season with a playoff berth, biding time until their books are clean.
Is that good enough? A payroll that approaches $80 million should buy more than patience and faux Eastern Conference contention. If these Nets have truly crashed into their ceiling, is it not time for them to expedite the financial pliancy process? Or is it, perhaps, time to double-down on an inflexible title window that was never totally open in the first place?
A Clear Need for Change
Wins over the New York Knicks and San Antonio Spurs have not given the appearance of a role reversal.
That victory over the Spurs was the Nets' first against an above-.500 opponent. They were 0-6 when facing winning teams entering the contest, and it took them an extra period to dispatch a team that saw Tony Parker, Tim Duncan and Kawhi Leonard put forth truly terrible performances on the offensive end.
"Our mental spirits are really turning and changing," Nets coach Lionel Hollins told WFAN's Joe & Evan Show (h/t Newsday's Roderick Boone). "We've become a closer team."
This year's Nets squad—even without Paul Pierce, Shaun Livingston and Andray Blatche—is indeed much further along than last season's prematurely ennobled group, make no mistake. It's not even a question after looking at the numbers:
| 2013-14 | 5-12 | 99.7 | 22 | 106.6 | 29 | 13 |
| 2014-15 | 8-9 | 101.9 | 21 | 102.9 | 12 | 8 |
| Difference | +3 | +2.2 | +1 | +3.7 | +17 | +5 |
If they go on a run similar to that of last year, finishing 2014-15 out 39-26, they'll enter the postseason at 47-35. Winning more than 57 percent of their games would, at the moment, be good for a top-four playoff seed. They landed the No. 6 spot in 2013-14.
Such a conclusion, while impressive, would mean little. The Nets would still need to go through at least two of the Toronto Raptors, Washington Wizards, Cleveland Cavaliers and Chicago Bulls in order to make it into the NBA Finals.
Once there, they would meet any number of Western Conference powerhouses, from the Spurs or Golden State Warriors, to the Houston Rockets or Portland Trail Blazers, to the Los Angeles Clippers or Memphis Grizzlies.
Not one of those giants will bend to Brooklyn. The West is a different animal, a more competent beast. The Spurs and Clippers are tied for the conference's sixth-best record, and they've each won 70-plus percent of their games.
Legitimately contending for a title, then, stretches the Nets beyond their means. They aren't properly equipped to come out of the East—they're a combined 0-3 against the top-seven squads thus far—and a swift exit awaits them in the Finals even if they do.
That's the best a below-average offense and respectable defense can give them. And that's not why the Nets were put together.
Difficulties of Detonation
Deliberate demolition has been the best option for this team since last season—provided it's actually an option.
If the Nets aren't tracking toward a title in 2014-15, and they have no money to improve the roster before 2015-16, purging their books of unwanted pacts and creating cap space before 2016 is only too tempting. They have plans for that summer, you see. Big plans.
"Every major Nets contract expires by the end of the 2015-16 season, with the exception of Deron Williams, who has an early termination option for $22.3 million," Devin Kharpertian of The Brooklyn Game wrote last spring. "That’s not a coincidence: like they did in the 2010 offseason, the Nets have geared up for a run at the 2016 offseason free agent class, led by Durant, who will be 28 in the 2016-17 season."
No, the Nets' salary-cap outlook most definitely isn't a coincidence. Running into one's known stalker every time you visit your favorite tweed jacket shop is more of a coincidence.
Every team that's any team will want a crack at Kevin Durant in 2016. Most franchises will also have serious spending power at the point, courtesy of the expected financial boon that could see the salary cap rise above $90 million.
Here's the catch: Star free agents like Durant aren't locks to leave. Money matters just as much as winning, and the Oklahoma City Thunder will be able to dangle millions of dollars more than any other suitor.
In lieu of contractual advantages, teams need other selling points. Markets come into play, but so too does the supporting cast.
Cleaning the books before 2016 allows the Nets to add talent that might entice Durant, among other stars, come 2016. As of now, their greatest selling point would be a then-32-year-old Williams and his expiring contract. That might not even be enough to land them a meeting.
Cap-clearing trades are the immediate goal if the Nets wish to become free-agent players as early as this summer. At least three of Jarrett Jack, Joe Johnson, Deron Williams and Brook Lopez would need to head elsewhere.
Problem is, Johnson's deal is likely immovable until this summer, when he has just one season remaining. That leaves them with the option of moving everybody else.
Except keeping Johnson while trading Williams, Lopez and even Jack won't get the Nets anywhere. It would definitely allow them to become free-agency players, but Johnson wouldn't be a selling point. They would be too dependent on a team absorbing his contract over the summer.
If there's a scenario in which the Nets could unload everyone before this summer, it's too drastic and would (probably) look something like this.
Brooklyn cuts $62 million from its bottom line next summer through this implausible trade, and that's before luxury taxes. That number would increase by $6.4 million if J.R. Smith didn't exercise his player option for 2015-16.
Never mind that the returns aren't even close to even or that the Knicks themselves would likely balk at ruining their flexibility. That's what hitting reset would look like.
This is, admittedly, why designed destruction remains unlikely. Too many obstacles—logic, for one—stand between the Nets and the financial freedom for them to become major free-agent courters before 2016.
Doubling Down
Acquiring cap space at the expense of actual talent is only worthwhile if the losses that follow amount to favorable draft positioning. The Nets don't unconditionally own the rights to their own first-round pick until 2019. Worse still, the Johnson trade from 2012 could come back to haunt them further.
The Atlanta Hawks negotiated the right to swap first-rounders with the Nets in 2014 and 2015. That provision proved not to matter in 2014. The Hawks had the better pick and elected not to swap. Even if they decided to switch selections, the Nets' first-rounder wasn't their own. It was sent to the Boston Celtics as part of the Garnett and Pierce trade.
Circumstances have changed this season, with the Hawks firmly entrenched inside the East's playoff bubble and the Nets on the brink of lottery purgatory, as Nets Daily points out:
"But with the Nets in disarray (we're being kind) and the Hawks improving, a swap in 2015 could add to the Nets' misery. The pick to be swapped has no protection. So, if the Nets don't make the playoffs, and they move up in the lottery, the Hawks would get their pick and the Nets would get the Hawks pick (assuming Atlanta doesn't fall out of the playoffs.) if for example the Nets won the overall No. 1 pick, they'd have to surrender it.
"
Upgrading the roster now would ensure the Nets' draft pick isn't as valuable. It also allows them to improve in ways they can't during free agency.
Consider a deal like this:
- Brooklyn Nets Get: F David Lee
- Golden State Warriors Get: SG Marco Belinelli and F/C Kevin Garnett
- San Antonio Spurs Get: SF Andrei Kirilenko
Lee is owed more than $30.5 million through the end of next season and has never been more expendable to the Warriors. Not only would he thrust them into luxury tax territory in 2015-16, but he's played just seven minutes all season and they still own the league's best record.
Garnett, meanwhile, is in the last year of his deal and tracking toward retirement. Though he's often viewed as a defensive linchpin, the Nets run the equivalent of a fifth-ranked defense when he's on the bench, compared to a 23rd-ranked attack when he's in the game.
Kirilenko has also fallen out of favor in Brooklyn. He hasn't played since Nov. 13, and Yahoo Sports' Adrian Wojnarowski says a trade remains possible once Kirilenko tends to a family matter in New York.
Both Kirilenko and Garnett are likely gone after this season, making them expendable. Lee is a double-double machine when healthy, not to mention a better passer than any bigs the Nets have now. He could inject life into their struggling offense.
And given the various other options—or lack thereof—acquiring a possible game-changer like him is the ideal bridge between immediate relevance and their (presumably) planned retooling efforts in less than two years.
Hardly Flexible, But Not Yet Trapped
There is no one move or even series of moves that will solve all that ails the Nets.
In the context of Eastern Conference basketball, they are not a bad team. They're a good team that's well-positioned to snag a playoff berth. But that's the light at the end of their tunnel right now. If they want to be something more than just another overpriced also-ran, they'll need to make moves, brokering deals that alleviate their financial burden or safeguard them against regression next year.
Standing in place, with this costly core, only promises more of the same—that which wasn't good enough last season, isn't good enough now and, truthfully, won't be good enough ever.
Stats courtesy of Basketball-Reference and NBA.com unless otherwise cited, and are accurate as of games played Dec. 3, 2014. Salary information via ShamSports. Draft-pick status from RealGM.
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