With the 2016-17 season approaching quickly, here are three Brooklyn Nets players that fans should keep an eye on throughout the year.
The Brooklyn Nets constructed quite an interesting roster this summer. Aside from Jeremy Lin and Brook Lopez, a majority of the team is made up of guys who haven’t fully developed their game.With that, it becomes more interesting to watch these rookies, second- and third-year guys because fans can watch them grow.
Brooklyn has 11 guys on the roster who have completed less than three NBA seasons, and only three have completed eight or more.
Whoever watches will have to suffer through all the mistakes that the young guys make while adjusting to the NBA level, but some of the inexperienced players are capable of executing highlight plays every now and again.
Here are three specific Nets to carefully watch once the brand spanking new campaign gets underway.
Jeremy Lin
Even though Lin doesn’t want us to, fans would love to see another iteration of Linsanity during his first year in Brooklyn.
The likelihood of Lin being the most entertaining player for the Nets is high because he’s been stifled his last couple of years in the league. Not since his days with the Knicks has a team given him a significant role, and the numbers show that Lin plays at a near All-Star level when given extended time.
As he’s matured, his errant play has subsided, and the Harvard grad can now control his aggression and use it to his benefit. The Nets will be under his control, and it’ll be his job to facilitate Kenny Atkinson’s unselfish offense.
He’ll also help anchor Brooklyn’s perimeter defense with Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, and the two guards can supply relentless ball pressure and–hopefully–force turnovers that lead to easy buckets.
Sean Kilpatrick
After bouncing around between the D-League and the NBA, Kilpatrick appears to have found a home in Brooklyn. And it’s great. The former Cincy Bearcat had a scintillating stretch of games over the final month-and-a-half of the season where he averaged 14.5 points a night on 46 percent shooting in just 24 minutes.
Production like that is remarkable, and it leads to the argument that Kilpatrick is the best perimeter scoring option for the Nets.
While Lin is the best all-around guard, Kilpatrick’s ability to score from the interior–along with the perimeter–makes him a lethal spark plug for Kenny Atkinson.
He knocks down threes at a respectable rate (36 percent) and converts on nearly 70 percent of his shots in the restricted area. His production is necessary for the Nets’ success, it just falls on him to bring it every night.
Rondae Hollis-Jefferson
There’s no player I love more than a tenacious, gritty defender, and Brooklyn has that with RHJ. When he was coming out of Arizona, scouts raved about his potential defensively, and he was living up to it before his ankle injury.
Per 36 minutes, Hollis-Jefferson was averaging a staggering 2.3 steals per game, and his minutes undoubtedly would’ve seen an increase if he were healthy for more of the season. What makes him a fantastic defender is his motor is always running–always. And he competes so hard on every possession.
He’ll be on an All-Defensive team at least once before his career is over, but what makes him a player to watch is his improving offense. On limited shot attempts, 4.8 a night, Hollis-Jefferson knocked down 45.7 percent of them.
An improvement on his jump shot would be stellar, and it would really open up the floor for the rest of the team. If it’s even slightly better than last year, RHJ could become a bigger piece than everyone imagined.