Are the Brooklyn Nets Legitimate NBA Title Contenders?

Come-from-behind victories in the NBA are typically celebrated as measures of mettle. Every so often, though, they can be disaffirming. The mere existence of a deficit becomes more telltale than the ability to overcome it. 

Either school of thought can apply to the Brooklyn Nets and Wednesday night's comeback victory over the New York Knicks. After trailing by as many as 21 points, they used a peppier second half and riveting fourth quarter to dispatch their crosstown rivals. Their rally was a testament to Kevin Durant, Patty Mills, small-ball, and Kevin Durant some more.

It was also a reminder of their fragility, broader incompleteness, and how their flaws continue to shine through even in victory—so much so that no win, including this one, offers a reprieve from their overarching reality: These Nets, as presently constituted, are not title contenders.

That isn't an inflammatory sentiment relative to Brooklyn's record. Eighth-place teams headed for the play-in tournament aren't supposed to be championship hopefuls. They are first-round steppingstones or potentially lottery-bound. 

But the Nets are not most eight-seeds (or aspiring seven-seeds). They have Durant. They have Kyrie Irving, full-time these days. They used to have James Harden. They still have the league's second-highest payroll. And above all, they had the Association's best title odds entering this season, per Fanduel Sportsbook.

Ending up as play-in participants is equal parts shocking and disappointing. The Nets went from championship inevitables to an ambiguous contradiction, their title stock torpedoed by nearly everything and everyone that buoyed it in the first place.

Kyrie began the season away from the team because he failed to comply with New York City's COVID-19 vaccine policy. He then rejoined the Nets on a part-time basis once they were ravaged by injuries and players entering the league's health and safety protocols. He only regained full-time status a few weeks ago when New York City's mayor, Eric Adams, "lifted the private sector vaccination mandate for professional athletes and performers in local venues." 

Harden wound up forcing his way onto the Philadelphia 76ers, at least somewhat because of Kyrie's part-time availability. Brooklyn received plenty in return for his exit, but its crowning acquisition, Ben Simmons, has yet to make his team (and season) debut while dealing with back pain and seems unlikely to suit up before the 2022-23 campaign.

Durant, meanwhile, missed roughly a month-and-a-half with a sprained MCL in his left knee. Joe Harris appeared in just 14 games before suffering a season-ending left ankle injury. And to top it all off, Brooklyn's frontcourt rotation has been riddled with inconsistent play and availability.

Sarah Stier/Getty Images

Mash it all together, and you get a Nets team that has more starting lineups (43) than wins (42) to its name. Even during a season in which COVID-19 wreaked havoc on just about every franchise, Brooklyn's revolving door and melodramatics fall on the extreme end of the spectrum. No organization in its position should be held to a championship benchmark.

And yet, the Nets have Durant, and Irving, and the luxury of the unknown.

They haven't enjoyed even a semblance of almost full strength for a protracted time. Seven-seed, eight-seed, nine-seed, 10-seed, whatever. Anything's possible for them in the postseason, provided they have KD and Kyrie.

Just look at what they did to the Knicks. Climbing out of a 21-point hole on the second night of a back-to-back is no joke. Mills went kaboom when it mattered. So did KD.

Kyrie hit some big shots. Head coach Steve Nash adjusted and went small down the stretch, with KD and Bruce Brown occupying the frontcourt slots. The defense made life difficult on RJ Barrett in the second half. The offense more than doubled up the Knicks in the fourth quarter (38-16).

Brooklyn won a game it most definitely should have lost.

Or did it almost lose a game it should've won without issue?

The Knicks are pluckier without Julius Randle, with the energy Obi Toppin and Jericho Sims, and with Barrett and Immanuel Quickley playing ultra-aggressively. They are also still the Knicks, one of this season's biggest letdowns and the 12th-best team in the Eastern Conference.  

Brooklyn may have beat them—er, check that, not lost to them—but to what end? And at what cost? Durant needed to play the entire second half for the third time in the past week-and-a-half. Kyrie was right there with him, and for much of the game, he looked like someone still adjusting to working more than every third or fourth day.

To Irving's credit, Nash hasn't exactly monitored his minutes. The same goes for Durant. Kyrie is averaging over 40 minutes in the past eight games, while KD is right behind him at 39.8.

These are playoff workloads being doled out at the end of the regular season, all so the Nets can preserve and maximize play-in positioning. Settling for the alternative is worse, but there is something hollow about burdening all of your available stars for the right to emerge from the play-in tournament as the seven- or eight-seed.

Let's not pretend this is necessarily tenable for Irving or Durant, either. Kyrie isn't yet accustomed to playing this often, let alone so much on the tail end of a back-to-back. And this is the third consecutive season in which KD has missed extensive time. 

Spinning their increased workloads as galvanizing energy sources is counterintuitive. Not that it stopped Nash from trying:

Sure. Totally. Pushing the limits of your stars to beat these Knicks on a Wednesday night in April is definitely reinvigorating and not at all possibly, potentially, maybe the exact opposite.

This all says nothing of the roster's flaws, the vast bulk of which were on full display at one time or another on Wednesday night. The Nets have annihilated opponents when KD and Kyrie share the floor without Harden, but the offense can still stagnate. They will go stretches without running enough scripted actions or setting enough screens, and their half-court pressure tends to stall out well before the rim.

The defense could be worse yet is still thoroughly vulnerable. Brooklyn gets thrown by the faintest ball movement and skewered in the open floor and doesn't have the consistent size or strength in the rotation to end possessions on the glass. Only the Charlotte Hornets post a lower defensive rebounding rate in the half-court.

Downsizing is so often the Nets' best option. Perhaps too often. Their KD-at-the-5 lineup that closed Wednesday's game outscored the Knicks by 18 points in seven minutes. But the numbers on Durant-as-the-big arrangements are sparse in sample size and not great overall.

Beyond that, can the Net really rely on him to anchor the frontline while playing 40-plus minutes with only Bruce Brown as reinforcement?

There's also the gargantuan matter of context. The Knicks are not a playoff team. Almost beating the Milwaukee Bucks in a single-game wind sprint is not the same as actually defeating them four times in seven tries. The Nets will not routinely be facing teams like New York that implode largely by their own hand in the postseason. They will have to get stops about more cohesive, patently elite squads like Milwaukee or Miami or Boston or Philadelphia-every-other-game.

On any given night, against any given opponent, the Nets absolutely have the firepower to win. But across a best-of-seven set, through multiple rounds, the "we have Kyrie and KD" crutch carries you only so far—and not into the Finals.

Unless otherwise noted, stats courtesy of NBA.com, Basketball Reference, Stathead or Cleaning the Glass and accurate entering Thursday's games. Salary information via Spotrac.

Dan Favale covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter (@danfavale), and listen to his Hardwood Knocks podcast, co-hosted by NBA Math's Adam Fromal.

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