Are Brooklyn Nets' Problems Fixable by Next Season?
The Brooklyn Nets are six games under .500 and holding on to a playoff spot. All hail the Eastern Conference.
Brooklyn does have inflexibility issues heading into next season, though. The Nets have just under $69 million on the books for next season, already over the projected salary cap, and that doesn't include money for Brook Lopez.
The good news for the Nets is that they've already addressed some of their problems over the past 15 games, a stretch during which they've won 11 times.
Brook Lopez has morphed into a force, garnering back-to-back Player of the Week awards. Lopez hasn't just returned to playing like he once did before foot injuries got the better of him; he's actually been better, averaging 26.2 points and 9.7 rebounds per game over his past 12 contests. He's gone for 30-plus in half of those games.
He's been more active in every way possible. He's screening as if he were a starving man who can only fuel himself with picks. He's finding space on the inside and showing off a bevy of floaters and hook shots, picking apart defenses with his craftiness in the paint. He's grabbing offensive boards at a rate he hasn't before.
That's the good news. Unfortunately, it comes with some bad, too.
As Grantland's Zach Lowe reported this week, "Most execs expect Lopez to opt out and enter free agency after rampaging across the league over the last month." Lopez has the choice to pick up a $16.7 million player option for next season.
That shouldn't necessarily be a shock, especially with the Nets center riding one of the hottest streaks of his career.
Most players might benefit by picking up the option, and Lopez very possibly won't earn a contract on the open market that nets him as much in average annual value as signing up for one more year in Brooklyn would.
He could take more money for a single season, wait around for the cap to shoot up in 2016 and capitalize on a new contract in a completely different market.
The salary cap next year projects to be around $66 million, according to ESPN.com's Brian Windhorst. In 2016, it could shoot up to $92 million. But Lopez is in a different situation than your average player for whom a one-year, non-injury risk might not be that large.
What if Lopez picks up that option and gets hurt next year? All of a sudden, he becomes a 7-footer who has missed three of the past five seasons. Centers never want to be branded with chronic foot issues. Lopez is already trying to shake off that label. He'll never be able to do that if he goes down again next season.
But back to the good, because there's still some positive in all of this: The Nets are still willing to spend.
“We need a championship team, and I’m very committed to continue to do all the best for the team," said owner Mikhail Prokhorov, who attended his first Nets game since Nov. 5 on Wednesday. “This is my perception, and if we need to pay a little bit more than any other teams, it’s not an obstacle.”
Spending has hardly been an issue for Prokhorov over the past few years. The team paid more money in luxury tax during the 2013-14 season than any other franchise in NBA history, but there has been reason to believe Brooklyn management wants to cut back spending.
The Nets have made budget-slashing moves over the past year or so.
They let Paul Pierce walk. They salary-dumped Andrei Kirilenko in a move that anyone would have done. All this has come amidst Brooklyn's interest in avoiding the vaunted repeater tax for next season. And how would it do that? By getting under the luxury-tax line.
Much of those luxury-tax theories, though, have stemmed from the notion that Prokhorov wants to sell the team. If you're attempting to unload an asset, the last thing you want is for it to be bogged down with unnecessary expenses. Wednesday, though, the Nets owner confirmed his commitment to the organization.
"I was never intending to sell the team," said Prokhorov. "If somebody wants to send me any kind of proposal, why not? Just to have a look. But we're only speaking about minority stakes in the team."
It's difficult to imagine how Brooklyn could return next season with a much-improved roster. Then again, it didn't seem possible that the Nets could upgrade their personnel this season. But just at the team's darkest moment, Thaddeus Young, whom they acquired for Kevin Garnett and the little on-court value he provided, came along.
Actually, it was not "little on-court value." Mike Prada of SB Nation said it better:
It was a deal that could've saved Billy King's job, for all we know. The Nets GM has made failed move after failed move over the past few years, but Brooklyn is 15-11 since trading for Young. Still, that doesn't mean everything is solved for next year.
The Nets defense still ranks 25th in points allowed per possession, even though Brooklyn employs a defensive-minded coach in Lionel Hollins. It gets torched with simplistic and repetitive schemes. There's miscommunication while guarding routine high pick-and-rolls. And schematically, Brooklyn doesn't make many in-game adjustments.
We've seen the Nets get brutalized on pick-and-rolls by the Charlotte Hornets earlier in the year, and by the Boston Celtics a little later. These aren't elite offenses; actually, quite the opposite. They're below-average ones. But they went to one play and ran it over and over again until they built up massive leads.
It was no surprise Brooklyn couldn't stop plays that began with the Atlanta Hawks' ball screens Wednesday night, either, even if DeMarre Carroll, Kyle Korver and Company did start missing some open shots late in the game to keep it close down the stretch, eventually dropping 114-11 to the team with the East's best record.
There isn't much financial flexibility in Brooklyn. We're probably going to see a similar Nets squad next year, with Lopez being the one wild card. And as long as Hollins is around, we can't expect major schematic changes. A going-on-62-year-old coach isn't bound to change things if he's been doing them the same way for decades.
Maybe the Nets make a slight win increase next year if Lopez stays healthy for the full season or if they can swing another Young-like deal or if Deron Williams bounces back and has his best season in a couple years. If everything goes right, it's not unthinkable they make a jump back to a win total in the 40s, a place where they lived in the previous couple seasons before this one.
But when a team doesn't have draft picks (the Nets may not select with their own pick until 2019), the future is always bleak, especially when it's locked into massive long-term deals on top of that, like the ones belonging to Williams or Joe Johnson.
Flexibility is gone. For now, it doesn't seem realistic to expect different results.
Follow Fred Katz on Twitter at @FredKatz.
All quotes obtained firsthand. Unless otherwise noted, all statistics are current as of April 10 and are courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com and NBA.com.
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