The Brooklyn Nets regular season resumes on Friday, but before that, let’s take a look at what they’ve done so far. It’s report card time folks.
By Chip Murphy
And it all begins at the top with a clueless owner who is yet to decide on a general manager or an interim coach.
If owner Mikhail Prokhorov would just admit his failures and realize his team needs to start over, they may have a chance with the right people in place.
Instead, the fans have been forced to watch another wasted season with meaningless numbers from supposed impact players like Brook Lopez and Thaddeus Young.
The Nets (14-40) are ranked in the bottom five of the NBA in nearly every important team category and only have the Philadelphia 76ers to look down to in the Eastern Conference.
The expectations for this season were low to begin with and the firing of head coach Lionel Hollins and general manager Billy King were necessary moves that won’t mean anything unless they are replaced with superior candidates, which is unlikely given recent history.
This is a look at how the Brooklyn Nets’ roster and personnel performed before the All-Star break.
The Bright Spots
Brook Lopez
Brook Lopez is having a normal Brook Lopez season, leading the Nets in scoring (20.2), blocks (1.8), PER (21.7), and win shares (4.7). He might not be a superstar but he’s the best Brooklyn has to offer.
As usual, Lopez is the Nets’ most valuable player.
In the 1,783 minutes that Lopez was on the floor, Brooklyn has an offensive rating of 100.9 which dips to an anemic 94.5 when he’s off the court.
As anticipated, the Nets are one of the league’s worst offensive teams, but having a dominant scorer in the post like Lopez — he scores 5.5 points per game while shooting 48.8% on post plays — is a huge boost.
The downside to depending on Lopez as your main scoring option is that you must play the game at a slow pace due. One of the biggest criticisms about Lopez is that he’s been dubbed a “black hole” after receiving the ball. Despite his normal flaws, Lopez has been the Nets best player this season.
Grade: B+
Thaddeus Young
Young adapted perfectly to the Nets after last season’s in-season trade from the Minnesota Timberwolves. Lost in this terrible season has been Young’s excellent all-around play.
He’s second on the team in scoring (15.1), first in rebounds (9.1), and first in steals (1.4). Young has always been regarded as a jack of all trades, master of none, but this year he’s taken his game to another level.
Most importantly, Young’s play has heightened his trade value; enabling Brooklyn to potentially gain legitimate assets for him at the trade deadline.
Grade: B+
Rondae Hollis-Jefferson
The rookie was only able to play in 19 games before going down with an ankle injury but he was looking like every bit the defensive stopper he was hyped as during draft time. Hollis-Jefferson was ranked second among shooting guards in defensive real plus-minus behind just the legendarily dominant defender, Tony Allen of the Memphis Grizzlies.
The Nets had an incredible 98.9 defensive rating with a 43.8 percent opponent’s FG% in the 420 minutes that Hollis-Jefferson was on the floor. Both marks were team bests, and heaped early praise onto the rookie. As great as he has been on defense however, there is just as much to worry about on the other side of the ball.
We learned the questions about his offense that were well-deserved as his jump shot is in serious need of a fix. During his small sample of games, Hollis-Jefferson only attempted 23 shots outside of the paint; although he wasn’t much better inside the restricted area, finishing at just a 50% rate. Offensive problems aside, he showed great promise for the Nets and was on his way to having one of the best rookie seasons in the NBA.
Grade: B
The Best of the Mediocre
The best that can be said about the historically inefficient Jarrett Jack this season is that he’s been worse. As usual, his horrible defense and ball dominating cost his team. He was a favorite of former head coach Lionel Hollins, and before his season-ending ACL injury Jack was playing well over 30 minutes per game.
Jack shot 39 percent from the field and 30 percent from three-point range, while averaging 3 turnovers. His 12.8 points and 7.4 assists aren’t enough to make up for his problems, because the fact is that Jack is a backup point guard. When he gets starter’s minutes, all he does is hurt his team.
The Nets were minus-6.2 points per 100 possessions with their starting point guard on the court this season. Again, that’s not the worst he’s ever played.
Grade: C
Shane Larkin was one of the Nets’ free agent acquisitions this summer. The former Knick came cheap after an unfortunate time in the triangle offense. He hasn’t been much better with his new team.
Brooklyn’s backup point guard is scoring just 6.7 points with 3.9 assists and 1.2 steals in 20.6 minutes, with a slash line of .442/.356/.804. His large negative discrepancy from offensive rating (98) to defensive rating (108) shows that he hasn’t been an asset on either end of the floor.
The Shane Larkin experiment has undoubtedly failed in Brooklyn, but with their cap situation they couldn’t have signed much better.
Grade: C-
The Busts
Although Joe Johnson’s play has improved from his horrible start, the scars are still there. Johnson can only be effective with the ball in his hands, and when he is missing shots at such an astounding rate it can derail a team’s entire gameplan. Johnson is not the reason the Nets are an absolute nightmare this season, but he certainly shares part of the blame.
The 34-year-old former star has taken a giant step back over the past two seasons. In 2015-16, the notorious ball hog is at least taking less shots than normal (only 10 attempts per game), but he’s becoming almost strictly a three-point shooter, as over 38% of his attempts are from downtown.
According to NBA Savant, Johnson is finishing at just a 50 percent rate when in the restricted area, forcing him to take a majority of his shots outside of the paint.
Grade: D+
The Nets expected big things from Bojan Bogdanovic, and he hasn’t developed into anything more than an average spot-up shooter. His development was supposed to help Brooklyn, instead he’s hurting them.
Via NBA Stats, in the 1,389 minutes with Bogdanovic on the floor, the Nets have an offensive rating of 97.6 which jumps to 100.6 in the 1,160 minutes that the 26-year-old is off the court. As has been the norm throughout his career, the greatest liability this season has been his defense.
According to ESPN.com, he is ranked 437 of 441 qualified players in the NBA in defensive real plus-minus and has cost the Nets more than 2 wins. Brooklyn has a defensive rating of 107.7 with him on the court, and he has an individual d-rating of 113. You get it right? The guy can’t play defense. It’s the reason Bogdanovic can’t stay on the court for long stretches at a time and until that changes — if it can — that Brooklyn can trust him during crunch time.
Grade: D
Thomas Robinson was a superstar recruit in college, but never lived up to the hype and struggled to find a role in the NBA. The Nets are Robinson’s fifth team at the age of 24, and he still wasn’t able to break out on a team that desperately needed his help.
In 48 appearances Robinson’s only managed to stay on the court for 10.4 minutes per game, with 3.4 points and 3.9 rebounds on just 45 percent shooting. Robinson has been average on defense — which is an accomplishment on this team — but he’s the Nets’ worst offensive player. Only 16 of his 152 FGA’s this season have come from outside the paint, a disastrous 2 of 16 clip from mid-range, via NBA Savant. You can see why he stays inside the paint.
Grade: D-
Ellington was brought in to be a three-point shooter on a team that was in desperate need of help in that area. He’s been the guy that launches non-stop deep balls — over 48 percent of his shot attempts are from downtown — but the problem is that he’s only making them at a 34 percent clip.
His below average success rate, and still logging 20.3 minutes is hurting his team. When Ellington is on the court the Nets are at their worst with an O-rating of 93.7, and at their best with him off the court at 102.6. For someone who was brought in for offense, Ellington has let the team down.
Grade: D-
Bench Warmers
Bargnani is one of the worst rotation players in the NBA. The former No. 1 pick isn’t just an inefficient player, he’s a joke. He has gone from hopeful stretch-four to averaging less than one attempt from downtown per game. His minutes have decreased as his defense is killing the Nets.
Grade: F
Since Jarrett Jack’s season-ending injury on Jan. 3, Sloan’s minutes have drastically increased to 25.5 per game. With that, so has his production, 7.95 points and 4.8 assists shooting 44.75 from the field and 44.65 percent from three-point range. Brooklyn has made him the primary point guard, and given him a chance likely for the rest of the season, but he hasn’t played enough to give him a grade on this season so far.
Grade: N/A
Like Sloan, Markel Brown has not played enough to get a full grade on this season although he’s looked impressive recently. He’s averaging 9.7 points on 62.1 percent from the field and 64.3 percent from three-point range over his last six games, showing potential that Nets’ fans have been hoping for.
Grade: N/A
The Staff
The Nets mercifully reassigned general manager Billy King to a lesser role when the team was 10-27. King wasn’t around long enough to make any mistakes this season, but he certainly had nothing to brag about considering he assembled the entire terrible roster.
Grade: F
It was only a matter of time before Lionel Hollins was fired. Some thought it would happen at the end of the season, but the Nets decided to pull the trigger earlier and clean house along with King. Hollins continued to ignore basic trends and the analytics that nearly every other team in the league was using; and in the end his ignorance cost him.