At this point, what can you say?
Is it the injuries? The poor shooting? The coaching? Is it getting used to playing together?
All of those things have probably led to the atrocious basketball being played by the Brooklyn Nets. On the one hand, maybe that’s a positive — the more things that are wrong, the more upside when they get fixed. On the other hand — well, this team might just be this bad.
The writing should have been on the wall for the organization’s Russian billionaire owner Mikhail Prokhorov and his general manager and fix-it man Billy King. Last season, they took on Joe Johnson’s onerous contract in hopes of adding a little star power, only to see the shooting guard turn in his worst season in 10 years as he adjusted to playing alongside Deron Williams.
We can only assume King was then heeding Prokhorov’s misplaced, win-now-at-all-costs urgency when he bought up the aging trio of Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, and Jason Terry for this season. Sure, they have won championships. But like Johnson, they cannot just be helicoptered in at this point in their careers. All three are currently on pace for the worst NBA seasons of their lives.
And, of course, signing Jason Kidd to coach the team nine days after finishing his playing career in Manhattan made a splash. But, as expected, Kidd is learning on the fly — the gulf between watching him patrol the sidelines and most of the other veteran coaches in the league should be obvious even to a casual fan.
Right now, the Nets — specifically Prokhorov and King — are getting a needed dose of humility, similar to the one endured by the Lakers last year when they tried to awkwardly jam Dwight Howard and Steve Nash into that team’s rotation.
Surely this team will be better once D-Will and All-Star center Brook Lopez get back on the floor. And until then, fans have reason to hold on to the fast-fading memory of this team beating the defending champion Miami Heat at full-strength in their home opener. But hopefully, the lessons being learned by the front office during this period are profound. Making headlines in the offseason might sell some tickets, but, ultimately, cultivating a fan base here will be about building a team with room to grow.
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.
