After back-to-back 20-win seasons, the Brooklyn Nets finally have the talent to begin building up back towards NBA relevance
Change is an inevitable part of life – no one can avoid it.
Sometimes it’s desired but not sought after, other times it’s forced upon us, and other times still it just happens. For Brooklyn Nets fans, they’ve experienced all of the above, but to take a page out of Doc Rivers’ book – it’s not their fault.
First there was the infamous trade with Boston – where Billy King channeled his inner Billy Beane..
…except he put his team under the metaphorical “50 feet of crap” and left the Nets with some beach shovels to dig themselves out of the mess he made.
Now, many an article have been written about the effects that specific trade has had on the league, so I’ll spare you my opinion on the trade. What I will say is that if you haven’t been paying attention to the Nets since that trade, then you’ve missed a lot. Let me catch you up.
Dating back to the 2014 offseason, the Nets have roughly lost seven players every offseason; most of them signing with a different team. While you probably wouldn’t blame the Nets for dropping players like Marquis Teague or Andray Blatche, guys like Shaun Livingston, Mirza Teletovic, and Willie Reed have gone on to prove they’re effective NBA players. While you can’t predict the future and know how players’ careers are going to turn out, you’ve got to wonder what Brooklyn’s front office was thinking trading for Sergey Karasev, signing Joe Harris and Andrea Bargnani, and having Luis Scola as your starting power forward.
Fortunately for Nets fans, this offseason has provided something that they haven’t even thought about being a possibility anytime soon – hope.
This offseason, the Nets still stuck with their trend of losing about half a roster (six players to be exact), but the moves they made this offseason are just as for the future as they are for the now, which is incredibly hard to do in today’s NBA, so bravo Sean Marks.
Just days before the NBA Draft, Marks and Co. packaged always-in-trade-rumors-but-actually-was-getting-traded-this-time Brook Lopez and the 27th overall selection (which turned out to be Kyle Kuzma) for D’Angelo Russell and Timofey Mozgod. No, folks, that’s not a typo:
An erroneous graphic gives Timofey Mozgov the best stat line ever http://t.co/Bie0glxXKD
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) April 11, 2014
While Timofey (pre-sent!) will most likely not put up 93 points again, he will be the Nets starting center (at least to begin the season) along with combo guard DLoading in a (kind of) new look starting 5.
Here’s what I think it’ll look like: Jeremy Lin – D-Loading – Allen Crabbe – RHJ – Mozgod.
Is that lineup going to strike fear into opposing teams? Probably not, but maybe the next slide will convince you there’s more than meets the eye past the monochrome uniforms the Nets don.