Brooklyn Nets' Future Riding on Thaddeus Young-Brook Lopez Combination
The Brooklyn Nets don't inspire a ton of hope for the future, which is all the more reason why they need to cling to the few positives they produced during a disappointing 2014-15.
Earlier Monday, though, the offseason roster attrition began:
According to Nets general manager Billy King confirmed the news just a few minutes later. Lopez will likely pass on a $16.7 million player option to become a free agent in the coming days as well.
Now, Brooklyn has to turn its attention to bringing back its starting power forward. And it must do so in tandem with retaining Lopez.
It's not necessarily about talent for Young, though he is the Nets' second-best player. It's more about fit, about what Brooklyn would be missing if he were to walk.
King knows this, too. He's making a concerted effort to change the style of a rickety team.
"We've been striving to do that the last couple offseasons is keep getting more athletic," King said. "I think we've done that, and the goal is to continue in that direction."
The Nets had one of the least athletic rosters in the league this past season. They improved on that a bit during the second half, when Young came over from Minnesota and Markel Brown entered the starting lineup for the final 29 games. But Brooklyn still played glacially.
Young helped a bit in forcing turnovers from the 4-spot. Brown did the same at shooting guard. And the Nets were able to push pace more effectively from some of those steals. The goal now is to build on that. But even though he's a satisfactory defensive player, Young's value to Brooklyn comes on offense.
Here's where Lopez enters the discussion.
King has talked time and time again about how Lopez is Brooklyn's No. 1 offseason priority. And though he hasn't made his decision for the upcoming offseason official, failing to pick up the option that's on the table for 2015-16 seems like an inevitability.
Lopez will almost definitely become a free agent. And the Nets will do absolutely everything they can to bring him back.
“I’m pretty confident," King said. "Because we have some tools in our favor to keep them."
"Tools" can likely be interpreted as Bird rights in this scenario. The Nets do own those for both Young and Lopez, meaning Brooklyn can go over the cap to re-sign either of them. That proves essential considering Young is certainly looking for more annual money than the $10 million deal he just turned down. Lopez, meanwhile, could end up on Fury Road with a mad max contract.
The Brooklyn center played quite possibly the best basketball of his career after the All-Star break, averaging 19.7 points and 9.2 boards while putting up some of the best offensive-rebounding production in the league. It's no coincidence he blossomed after King brought Young into town.
Lopez struggled at the start of the season partly because of basketball geography. His positioning on the court was all wrong.
Playing next to the likes of Mason Plumlee and the mostly immobile Kevin Garnett pushed him all the way out to the perimeter. Because of that, Lopez, whose comfort zone comes closer to the basket, turned into more of a pick-and-pop threat than he ever was before.
Per NBA.com, more than 35 percent of his field-goal attempts came from the mid-range area before the All-Star break. But that all changed with Young's presence.
It's no coincidence Lopez's ratio of mid-range attempts crashed to a far more reasonable 25 percent once the Nets acquired their new starting power forward. Thad operates on the perimeter and almost plays like a small forward, which allowed Brooklyn to spread the floor and run pick-and-rolls with Lopez and Deron Williams. The end result was Lopez dissecting defenses with his arsenal of layups, baby hooks and floaters.
It wasn't a style he could play even with a stretchy K.G. on the floor next to him. Garnett sank his jumpers and commanded respect from closing-out defenders, but he mostly operated around the elbows. Young, meanwhile, can head to the wings comfortably. He also got as hot as ever from three playing inside the Brooklyn offense, where he hit 38 percent of his long balls, though Nets fans shouldn't expect that to sustain over a larger sample size.
In the end, the Nets outscored opponents by 3.2 points per 100 possessions when they used lineups with both Young and Lopez. That's even more impressive when you realize Brooklyn, as a team, actually got outscored by 3.1 points per 100 over the course of the full season.
In the NBA's current economic environment, there are two kinds of max players.
First are the Actual Maxers. You know them. Even my mother, who can name all of five NBA players (one of whom is oddly Chris Andersen since she's fascinated by his tattoos), can list off a few: LeBron James, Kevin Durant, etc.
But the league's new television deal that kicks in for the 2016-17 season has created the Fake Maxers. They'll get the same contract, but for different reasons.
Once the $24 billion, nine-year deal takes over, a TV pact almost three times the size of the league's current one, the cap projects to jump from about $67 million next year to $88 million in the following one, an unprecedented increase. And since a max contract is just a percentage of the cap during whichever season the deal is signed, some of those agreements will look better and better as time goes by.
So, we're going to see guys like Draymond Green and Khris Middleton become (or come close to becoming) Fake Maxers this summer. Signing them for about 25 percent of the cap (what their max would be) today seems crazy. But it'll make a little more sense when their contracts make up only about 20 percent of the cap the following year. And they'll look even better the year after that, when there could be another colossal boost that sends the cap over $100 million.
Though Lopez's max would be a bit more expensive than Green's or Middleton's since he's been in the league longer, the concept remains the same. And the Nets might risk throwing loads of money at an injury-prone player because they don't have many other avenues to acquire talent.
They won't pick until No. 29 in Thursday's draft, and though they are trying to trade up, King didn't seem encouraged about their prospects of doing so.
"Do I think we can move up? I don’t think so, but you still have to go through the process and find out," King said. "A lot of our conversations, the price to move up is high, but it tends to go down when you get closer to the draft."
Their 2016 pick goes to the Boston Celtics as a result of the deal that brought Garnett, Paul Pierce and Jason Terry to Brooklyn during the summer of 2013. Boston could end up swapping selections with them in 2017, too. And guess what? The Nets don't have a pick in 2018, either.
Darn Celtics ruining everything.
With the contracts of Joe Johnson and Deron Williams clogging up room on the roster, Brooklyn wouldn't be able to replace Lopez or Young with equally talented free agents if either or both were to walk come July. So, the Nets could be in for an overpay. But overpays are relative.
If the Nets want to be a playoff team, bringing back Young and Lopez for marked-up prices might be the only way to do it. At the very least, they can feel confident in moving forward with a frontcourt that plays well together.
Follow Fred Katz on Twitter at @FredKatz.
All quotes obtained firsthand unless noted otherwise. Unless otherwise noted, all statistics are current as of June 23 and are courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com and NBA.com.
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