Is this really that different than any other year?
LeBron, Lonzo, Ingram all sat out the Lakers stretch run while Olapipo missed the playoffs and Blake Griffin sat out the final 2 playoff games for their teams last year.
Obviously the Nets is a little more extreme, but you have teams like the Clippers ('16) missing Blake and Chris Paul by the end of their 1st round run, and the Rockets ('09) missing both Yao and McGrady by the end of their 2nd round run.
And I'm sure there's been other teams in recent history limping to the playoffs with depleted rosters. (One seemingly random not-so-recent team that comes to mind is the '94 Cavs, missing Nance and Daugherty, both All-Stars the prior year, and Hot Rod Williams, a solid starter, getting swept by a Jordan-less Bulls).
So far this just feels like a couple of teams hit hard by the injury bug and/or sitting out players when they don't have a shot, which happens all the time.
Will admit though, we're teetering on the edge of going well past that point, but so far it still feels like a somewhat normal playoff run in terms of player availability to me.
The Nets situation is different from anything I can recall in recent years. While what the Wizards are doing is on part with end of regular season stuff, the Nets are going to do this in their playoff series. They are also already this depleted before they have a single game (or get more positives down there). Currently they are down:
Durant
Kyrie Irving (first in minutes played for limited games he played, leading scorer)
Spencer Dinwiddie (second in minutes played, second leading scoring, starter when Irving sat)
Prince (4th in minutes played, basically started all games)
Deandre Jordan (8th in minutes played, leading rebounder, platoon at center)
Wilson Chandler (9th in minutes played)
Their starting 5 for the playoffs is currently projected to be:
PG: Tyler Johnson (signed off street two weeks ago)
SG: Caris Levert (solid starter)
SF: Joe Harris (ok bench player)
PF: Timothé Luwawu-Cabarrot (probably not a rotation player)
Center: Jaret Allen (solid starter)
Bench includes guys like Dzanan Musa, recently signed off street Justin Anderson, Chris Chiozza (?) and they currently don't have a backup center. This is pretty clearly unprecedented for a team to trot out there in a first round playoff series and allows the opposing teams to basically only play their starters 25 minutes if they want to. Given that players may be in worse shape than normal, this would be a potentially huge advantage for their first round opponent.