On June 28, 2012, the newly minted Brooklyn Nets, fresh out the swamps of Jersey, traded cash for two players who had been selected that day at the draft: Tyshawn Taylor, the senior point guard who had just helped lead the University of Kansas to the national championship game, and forward Tornike Shengelia from Georgia (the country, not the state).
For Shengelia, born in 1991, suiting up for the Nets would have marked the first time he played in America after three years playing professionally in Europe. For Taylor, born in 1990, it was a homecoming. Raised in Hoboken, Taylor attended St. Anthony High School in Jersey City, where he was groomed by legendary coach Bobby Hurley, Sr.
And he couldn’t have been more ecstatic when he found out he was headed to the Borough of Kings.
“I jumped up when I heard my name called for Brooklyn,” Taylor told reporters at one of his first Nets practices. “I knew it was an opportunity to do something positive in my area.”
Tyshawn and Toko showed flashes of promise in their first season, but neither were able to earn consistent minutes, and found themselves enduring the less glamorous side of early NBA life: 144-mile trips between New York and Springfield, Mass., where they stayed game-ready by playing occasionally for the Nets’ D-League affiliate.
Soon, it became clear that the Nets had little interest in developing them into contributors. When Brooklyn went all in on the veteran trio from Boston this offseason, it all but assured that Taylor and Shengelia would need to go elsewhere to make their mark.
Earlier this month, Nets General Manager Billy King announced he had traded Shengelia to the Chicago Bulls for Marquis Teague, who was a freshman point guard at Kentucky when the Wildcats beat Taylor’s Kansas squad in the 2012 national championship. At this point in his NBA career, Teague hasn’t shown himself to be more effective than Taylor, but he is younger.
As for Taylor, he was sent to the New Orleans Pelicans for the rights to a tall European still playing overseas. Two days later, the Pelicans waived Taylor’s contract. Now, the Nets’ hometown kid is no longer in the NBA.
These are minor moves. But given the small sample size that we have to judge Billy King’s ability to evaluate and develop young basketball talent at the Nets, they raise some long-simmering questions about whether he has the patience to construct a great team. In Philadelphia, where King established himself as an NBA dealmaker, he ultimately whiffed on a chance to build a juggernaut around a once-in-a-generation player in Allen Iverson, whom he had inherited there.
With the Nets, a wealthy and championship-hungry owner has given him the cover to trade away all his picks for immediate gain, while stashing the rights to European players of unknown value overseas. This has spared him the embarrassment of questionable draft- day selections and the difficulty of trying to grow a team from the bottom up.
Taylor and Shengelia are two of King’s rare attempts to secure some young talent through the draft. Now that he’s flipped both of them, Nets fans are left to wonder whether this organization can make its own players better.
“I mean it always get worst before it get better right!?” Taylor tweeted Tuesday.
Maybe somewhere it will, Tyshawn. Just not here.
Matt Spolar is a nearly 6-foot-1 journalist with a middling high school basketball career who is sure the Nets win thanks to team’s top-tier guards.