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Brooklyn Nets’ Complete 2016-17 Season Preview
- Updated: September 26, 2016
Dating back to 2010, when Mikhail Prokhorov first became the team’s majority owner, the Brooklyn Nets have dedicated most of their time and resources to dodging patience and process.
Trading for Deron Williams, acquiring Joe Johnson, mortgaging the future for Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce, dealing for Thaddeus Young—that was more the Nets’ speed.
Those moves came to define them. They chased immediate fixes without ever procuring permanent answers, slowly chipping away at their foundation until there was no way out—no slapstick solution to mask longstanding need for direction.
That direction came last February, with the Nets sitting at 14-40, miles outside the Eastern Conference’s playoff picture, when the team named Sean Marks as its general manager. He made it clear he wasn’t arriving to succeed where his predecessor, Billy King, had failed; he joined the Nets to build something different and create something that lasts.
Marks has already committed Brooklyn to a more traditional rebuild. He hired rookie head coach Kenny Atkinson. He traded Young to the Indiana Pacers for a first-round pick (Caris LeVert). He rolled the dice over and over in free agency.
His message is clear, even if the team’s future is not: The Nets will no longer shy away from patience or process.
Biggest Offseason Move
It’s tough to single out one of the Nets’ offseason moves. There were so many to like, and each signified a meaningful change to how this franchise does business.
Hiring Atkinson immediately following the 2015-16 campaign was huge. He has never served as a head coach but is an ideal fit for Brooklyn’s situation. The time he spent under Mike D’Antoni with the New York Knicks and Mike Budenholzer with the Atlanta Hawks more than prepares him to lead a large-scale reinvention project.
Convincing Allen Crabbe ($74.8 million) and Tyler Johnson ($50 million) to sign offer sheets helped put the Nets on the radar. Their incumbent teams matched those deals, but it says a lot that Brooklyn could sell players on its future mere months after winning 21 games.
Randy Foye joined the cause for this reason. The 33-year-old journeyman went as far as mentioning Brooklyn in the same breath as the San Antonio Spurs during a conversation with the New York Daily News’ Stefan Bondy:
A lot of places you go, they search and look for superstars to fill voids every year. But I think this here is more of a culture. And just see how the Spurs and how they build a culture, they have three guys and have other guys come in and are a part of that culture and help build that culture. And that was one of the most important reasons for me signing here.
Appealing to role players and up-and-coming restricted free agents isn’t the same as poaching a superstar, but these are much-needed baby steps.
Jeremy Lin is the Nets’ crowning addition. His three-year, $36 million contract is a steal by today’s salary-cap standards, and he’s coming off the most balanced season of his career.
Lin became more nuanced under Charlotte Hornets head coach Steve Clifford, defending better, making better decisions, lowering his turnover rate and passing more out of pick-and-rolls. He was one of three players to score on at least 58 percent and pass on at least 35 percent of his drives while staging 300 or more of those downhill assaults.
His company was Kawhi Leonard and Chris Paul.
Playing for Atkinson should have a similar effect on Lin. The team around him is less talented and generally more inexperienced, but he has never been fitter for starting point guard duty than now.
Rotation Breakdown
Brook Lopez is the Nets’ starting center. Lin is the starting point guard. Everything else about the rotation is up for debate:
Sean Kilpatrick should be the starting shooting guard if Brooklyn is catering to the big picture. Foye doesn’t factor into the future, and Marks doesn’t know when the rookie LeVert (Jones fracture) will be ready to rock, per The Vertical’s Chris Mannix.
Rondae Hollis-Jefferson is a good fit for the small forward …
