Brooklyn Nets affirm progress with NBA playoff push
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Saturday 6 April 2019 21:22, UK
The Brooklyn Nets are on the verge of achieving a success that will mark a crucial step in their ascension back towards NBA title contention , writes Sky Sports NBA analyst Mark Deeks.
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With only a week left in the season, the Brooklyn Nets are in the thick of an extremely close race for the final three playoff seedings in the Eastern Conference.
Technically, it is a five-horse race. On a 37-42 record, the Charlotte Hornets could still mathematically make it in. The odds of them doing so, however, are extremely slim. Instead, the final spots will surely go to three of the Orlando Magic (40-40), Detroit Pistons (39-40), Nets (39-40), and Miami Heat (38-41).
Of the four, the Magic are currently the team in form. Refusing to be sellers at the trade deadline despite falling to a lowly 20-31 record at one point, the Magic have won 20 of their past 29 games, and eight of their last ten. And while most of the wins in that 10-game streak have come against lottery opposition, victories over the Philadelphia 76ers, Indiana Pacers and a crucial triumph against the Heat reaffirm their improvements over the second half of the season and give them the comfort of form heading into the final week.
Having been boosted by Blake Griffin's return from injury, the Pistons also have an upper hand on the spot given their favourable schedule. Mired on a 21-28 record themselves at one point and looking at another forlorn season, the Pistons then peeled off a 15-game stretch in which they went 12-3, and while they have wobbled since then, they have the advantage of a relatively easy schedule to close out the season. After Griffin showed himself to be healthy when scoring 45 points in Friday's loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder, the Pistons only have to face the Hornets, Memphis Grizzlies and New York Knicks.
The third spot, as it stands, will go to the Nets. But for them, it is very much going to be a case of hanging on, because their run-in has - and continues - to be brutal.
In their final three games, the Nets will play the Milwaukee Bucks, Indiana Pacers, and then the Heat to close. That is the best team in the NBA, a competitive Eastern conference team, and a comparable rival who simply must win and are likely to play accordingly.
Furthermore, over their last 10 games, the Nets have been up against a schedule featuring only two lottery teams, the Sacramento Kings and the LA Lakers. Wins in those games represent two of their only three wins over that 10-game stretch; while the other seven games were against very difficult opposition that the Nets were invariably able to make competitive contests, but lost nonetheless.
If the Nets are to fall at the final hurdle, this would be a disappointing end to the first season containing genuine hope for the franchise since the 2013-14 campaign. That was the first season after the Nets traded for Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett from the Boston Celtics, building a theoretical super team of they, Deron Williams, Brook Lopez and Andrei Kirilenko. The excitement was to come from an urgent push towards competitiveness from a team that had not won a playoff series for six seasons.
That 2013-14 season was however a total wash-out. Pierce and Garnett looked remarkably old remarkably quickly, and Kirilenko even more so, while Williams began a precipitous and subsequently terminal decline, and Lopez missed almost the entire campaign through injury. Indeed, it was that season that cost the Nets any ambition, excitement or potential for subsequent seasons; as has been extensively documented elsewhere, the price paid to acquire the ageing Celtics stars was so high as to completely submarine any rebuilding plans, and the journey back from there has been a long one.
In the years since, the Nets have subsequently worked the margins with the hand they were forced to play to acquire whatever assets they could, and made some excellent value free agency signings, in order to build up a fun team with youth and potential on its side (the team's average age of 25.6 years is the 10th youngest in the league, and the core players are mostly younger than that), that can also enjoy a level of short-term success comparable if not greater than anything the franchise has had over the last decade. As asset-free rebuilds go, the Nets have done well; with so few assets to work with relative to their fellow rebuilders, they have hit with most of their decisions.
Because of that youth, the Nets have a favourable prognosis for the future, regardless of the outcome of this season's playoff race. For example, among their five leading minute recipients, D'Angelo Russell is only 23, Joe Harris is 27, Caris LeVert is 24, Spencer Dinwiddie has just turned 26, and Jarrett Allen is still only 20. With the notable exception of the Denver Nuggets, most of the other very young teams still have much of their core to establish. Brooklyn are ahead of that curve.
That said, there are some difficult contractual decisions coming up if this core is to be kept together. Not least of these is the decision surrounding the future of Russell, a dynamic player averaging 21.1 points and 6.9 assists per game who has made significant improvements this season, yet whose reliance on streak-shooting to do so tempers his impact on a nightly basis.
Russell's free agency situation also dovetails awkwardly with the Nets' plan to be able to offer two maximum value deals this summer, something they cannot realistically do with Russell around, and which they may not be able to do anyway given the albatross that is Allen Crabbe's contract, the only significant mistake of the rebuild so far. Having Spencer Dinwiddie also at the point guard spot, an excellent backup guard now tied into a favourable deal himself after signing an extension at the beginning of this season, arguably makes Russell expendable. Yet to lose their leading scorer, assists leader, minutes leader, play-saver and hub of the offense will be a loss to the team should it happen, regardless of what were to return.
The intended future of the Nets' franchise is of course not merely fighting it out for the low playoff seeds and an inevitable drubbing at the hands of the dominant Milwaukee Bucks or Toronto Raptors. The whole point of waiting out the fallout from the Garnett and Pierce trade, rebuilding in a much less urgent way, was to put together the pieces with which to form a legitimate contender, even if such pieces took time to formulate. To survive this brutal closing schedule and make the playoffs in 2018-19 would be an achievement of sorts and a pleasing end to a feel-good year, especially so with a good showing in the postseason itself. But it is not the level the Nets are or should be content with going forward.
That said, it is a step in the process. The NBA's middle class features three kinds of teams - those on the way up, those on the way down, and those who were never really either (e.g. Charlotte and Detroit). The Bucks and Nuggets, two of the best teams in the NBA this season, have demonstrated the value of the middle class if it is a transitional phase gone through by a team with talent, cohesion and patience.
Milwaukee sported a 44-38 record last season while Denver somehow missed the playoffs despite going 46-36, yet keeping those teams essentially together and improving internally has seen them become two of the best teams in the league and legitimate title contenders. Brooklyn will be targeting the same, with the added benefit of big free agency money to spend this summer to aid them in that quest. A postseason run can only help with those aspirations, too.
'And when they were only half way up, they were neither up nor down,' says the nursery rhyme. Somewhat true in the NBA. But the Nets have been slowly on the up for a while now, and have now reached the halfway point. If they can ride out this final week and make the playoffs, it will be a significant step in the process.
