Brooklyn is going to be terrible- We really could get a top 5 pick this year...

[The Walker Wiggle]

Johnson isn't a bordeline all-star and hasn't been one for years.  The only thing Johnson was ever exceptional at was scoring and that has been on a serious decline over the past three seasons.

If you want to be a contrarian wet blanket, is it too much to ask that you AT LEAST base it on facts?

Jesus Joe was an All Star in 2014? He's also still one of the best late game scorers in the league, shooting a higher percentage over the past three seasons in close, end-of-game situations than Lebron, Curry, Melo, Kobe, even our guy Pierce.

[Moranis]

Johnson isn't a bordeline all-star and hasn't been one for years.  The only thing Johnson was ever exceptional at was scoring and that has been on a serious decline over the past three seasons.

If you want to be a contrarian wet blanket, is it too much to ask that you AT LEAST base it on facts?

Jesus Joe was an All Star in 2014? He's also still one of the best late game scorers in the league, shooting a higher percentage over the past three seasons in close, end-of-game situations than Lebron, Curry, Melo, Kobe, even our guy Pierce.

Come on, let's not let facts get in the way.

[loco_91]

I wouldn't count on Brooklyn sucking.  They finished the season strong.  Brook Lopez and Thad Young made a difference.  I think our pick from them will end up in the 12-17 range.

So...

Boston made a ton of trades around the All-Star break, and then went on to finish the season as the second hottest team in the Eastern conference.  That was a total fluke, so that success will not carry over to next season. 

Brooklyn made a trade around the All-Star break, and then went on to finish the season strong.  That was because the trade made the team better, and so as a result that success full carry over to next season. 

Got it, sound logic.

From a talent standpoint, Brooklyn's late season success made a lot more sense than Boston's.  Brooklyn played well down the stretch because of allstar talent.  Boston played well down the stretch because of effort and execution driven by a wonder-coach.  Which is more sustainable?   I don't think either will be bottom 5 next year.  But if forced to guess which of the two is most likely to bottom out, it has to be the shakey Boston lineup.  Both picks probably end up 12-17.  Injuries can derail Brooklyn, but if they are healthy they should be a playoff team.  A lot has to go right for Boston to sneak into the playoffs again in spite of their blatant lack of talent, imo. 

On paper, Brooklyn looks solidly mediocre. Lopez is 20/10 impact player. Johnson is a borderline all star. There's talent there.  On paper, Boston sucks. Stevens proved last year he could MacGyver a .500 team out of paperclips and superglue, but it's hard to sustain quirk success.  I'll admit I'm a bit enthusiastic about the David Lee addition (though we already had a handful of borderline starter power forwards) , but how excited can you really get about a team when the best player is coming off a playoffs appearance where he averaged 8 minutes off the bench and had 8 coach decision DNP's?  Stevens has his work cut out for him and he struggled early last season finding success while balancing an overloaded roster filled with redundancies.

With all due respect, there is absolutely no sense in any of the points / arguments you're trying to make here. 

What All-Star talent did Brooklyn have at the end of the season, that they didn't have in the first half of the season? 

The only guy on the Brooklyn roster who is even CLOSE to being an All-Star talent is Brook Lopez, and for the first time in recent memory he actually played starters minutes  (72 games @ 30 MPG).  You certainly can't try to argue that Thaddeus Young (14 and 5 last season) is an All-Star talent, because that would just be plain trolling.

Also how on earth is Lopez a 20/10 player?  He's he's not averaged 20/10 once in his entire career. The closest he ever came was in 2009/10 when he averaged 18.8 points and 8.6 rebounds.  That 8.6 rebounds was also (for the record) a career high for him, and still is.  Which is downright embarrassing for  a guy with his physical profile (7'1" / 260 pound / 7'5" wingspan) who's entire game is based in the paint.  Once you factor in his size and his style of play, he must seriously be one of the worst rebounding bigs ever to play the game.

Also, if you're going to label Lopez (with his 17 / 7 in 29 minutes) as All-Star talent, then you can't really get away from awarding Isaiah Thomas (with his 19 / 5 in 29 minutes) with the same label.  If you don't then I would love to hear your reason why, since neither player actually made the All-Star team and both put up similar numbers over the course of the season.

Likewise your claim that Joe Johnson is a borderline All-Star is might have been a respectable claim back in 2013/14, but trying to make that argument for last season is quite honestly laughable.  He's 34 years old and his his Per-36 stats from last year (14.9 points, 5 rebounds, and 4.2 assists) were the worst of his career.  He's clearly on the decline and a shadow of his former self, and if those are 'border All-Star' numbers, then you must love our Celtics, because that would mean that Tyler Zeller (17 / 10 / 2.4), Jared Sullinger (17 / 10 / 2.5), Avery Bradley (16 / 3.5 / 2), Kelly Olynyk (16.5 / 7.7 / 2.8 ), Jonas Jerebko (14.1 / 9.6 / 2.0), David Lee (15.5 / 10 / 3.4) and Evan Turner (12.4 / 6.6 / 7.2) are all borderline All-Stars too.

It's simple - Boston turned their record around because they traded out their two greatest on-court liabilities and re-allocated those minutes to guys who had far, far more positive impact.

Advanced stats show that Rondo was one of the NBA's biggest liabilities at his position, with a Real Plus Minus of -3.21 (ranking him 69th out of 84 NBA Point Guards).  When Boston traded him out, they gave those minutes to Marcus Smart (+2.22, 12th among PG) and Isaiah Thomas (+1.45, 21st among PG).  That is a improvement of +5.43 when Smart is on the court, and +4.66 when Thomas is on the court.  Both are HUGE turnarounds, and that type of improvement at the Point Guard spot along is enough to generate a huge improvement as a team.

But if you look at stats shot that Jeff Green you'll see that there was a similar story at the SF spot too.   Green was statistically a major liability for us, with a a RPM of -3.56 ranking him right towards the bottom of NBA Small Forwards (68th out of 80).  When he was traded out his minutes went to a combination of Evan Turner (-1.37, 45th among Shooting Guards), Jae Crowder (-0.44, 29th among Small Forwards) and Jonas Jerebko (+2.6, 14th among Power Forwards).  This was basically a simple case of addition by subtraction, because even though not all of out players actually had a positive RPM, every one of them was a substantial improvemnt over Green regardless of whether it was Turner (+2.19), Crowder  (+3.12) or Jerebko (+6.16) - the improvement at the SF was drastic.

Now if you look at our other starters, we had no real liabilities at the other positions.  We were going just fine at SG (Bradley: -0.34), at PF (Sully: +1.66) and at C (Zeller: +0.58 / Olynyk: +3.50).

Now lets do a very rough calculation of the change between old and new scenario.

Old Roster:
Zeller: +0.58
Sully: +1.66
Green: -3.56
Bradley: -0.34
Rondo: -3.21
Net RPM: -4.87

Old Roster:
Zeller:+0.58
Sully: +1.66
Turner: -1.37
Bradley: -0.34
Smart: +2.22
Net RPM: +2.75

Not obviously this isn't the perfect scientific method for calculating this, but at a quick glance I think this easily demonstrates how the mid seasons trades made by DA could very easily have transformed this team from a really, really bad team to an actually pretty darn good one.

You may like or loathe RPM, but regardless of how you feel I think it's easy for any fan who actually watched the games to see from the eye test that the above makes a lot of sense.  Even when Rondo was on the team, we always seemed to play much better when he came off the court, and Smart came one - we tended to close gaps, build leads, etc.  Likewise I think we all felt like we played much better as a team when we had Turner, Jerebko or Crowder on the court as opposed to when Green was out there.

Now lets look at the Brooklyn trade. 

Brooklyn traded Kevin Garnett to the Timberwolves in exchange for Theddeus Young, right?  Well Kevin Garnett had an RPM last year of  +0.90 (25th among PF) while Theddeus Young had an RPM of +1.20 (18th among Small Forwards). 

So Brooklyn have essentially traded one plus contributor for another slightly more plus' contributor.  This trade improves Brooklyn as a team, but only by +0.3 which is barely (if at all) significant.

Ultimately, that was really the only significant trade that Brooklyn made last year, so that move alone is nowhere near enough (according to stats) to account for Brooklyn's late season surge. 

Now even if you completely ignore the statistics, it's pretty blatantly obvious that Boston made far more in the way or roster changes (trading away two starters) than Brooklyn trading away one starter) did, so no matter how you look at it I cannot understand how you can possible try to argue that Brooklyn's late season surge is a result of roster changes, while Boston's was just a result of "last minute increase in hustle". 

It just makes no sense whatsoever.

Boston clearly made more drastic changes to their roster mid-season than Brooklyn did, so the "roster changes" argument is far more justifiable for Boston than it is for Brooklyn.  It is far more believable that Boston could have made a huge turnaround as a team after all those roster changes, then it is that Brooklyn could have made such a big turnaroud after one small roster change.  Especially if you're only real argument for Brooklyn is based on the the supposed new-found bond between Lopez and Young - yeah, that's very sustainable!

No matter how you look at it, Boston had a better season AND that did more to improve this season.  There is absolutely not a single rational justification as to why anyone would believe that Brooklyn would finish with a better record then Boston this year.  Even if injuries come in to play, Boston has so much depth that their impact would be minimal - while one or two injuries could absolutely cripple the nets.

Neat. I anticipate both brooklyn and Boston to be in the hunt for the last couple playoff seeds in the Least.  It would be a surprise to see either in the bottom 5, but I'd say Boston's success last year was the most flukey for a variety of reasons... thus they are the most likely candidate for a disaster season of the two teams. Of the two teams, Boston's success is the least repeatable.  I think we can all acknowledge that winning games without NBA starters is a heck of an achievement.  Much easier to finish .500 with an all-star low post scorer, 7x all-star shooting guard, and additional veteran starters.

I think it's wayyyy easier to see Bkn ending up top 5 than us. Their fourth-best player is who-- Andrea Bargani? Jarrett Jack? If they suffer injuries to any of their three good players-- and their best player Lopez is very fragile, as we know-- they will be in serious trouble. They could overperform, stay healthy, and land a playoff spot, but in terms of worst-case scenario theirs is pretty dismal.

[fairweatherfan]

Yeah I don't think Brooklyn is a bottom 5 team by default, but the number of bad things that would have to happen to put them there is a lot smaller than the number of bad things that'd have to happen to us.  And it's possible even keeping the same roster and staying healthy still puts them in that range.  But the bottom 2/3rds of the East is such a mess that there's a wide range of plausible outcomes there.  Have to wait and see.

[Moranis]

To be fair Brook Lopez played more minutes last year than Amir Johnson, David Lee, Isaiah Thomas, Jared Sullinger, and everyone else on the current Celtics not named Avery Bradley or Evan Turner.  Yes, he has basically missed 2 full seasons, but he has also played basically full seasons in the other 5, including last year. 

[D.o.s.]

That's true, but I think the nature of Lopez's injuries bring about more skepticism -- Big Dude With Foot Problems is a well established tragedy in the NBA.

[PhoSita]

It's entirely probable that Brooklyn ends up with a terrible record, but it's also entirely plausible they end up with a decent one.

My position on this has always been that it's easier to end up in the middle than at the bottom when your team is in the Eastern Conference.

The pattern I've noticed in these conversations is that the pessimism that people apply to the Nets doesn't get applied to the Celtics, while the optimism that gets applied to the Celtics doesn't get applied to the Nets.

I think the floor is higher for the Celts, but the ceiling for the Celts isn't much higher than the Nets.  Both teams are pretty mediocre.

[LarBrd33]

I wouldn't count on Brooklyn sucking.  They finished the season strong.  Brook Lopez and Thad Young made a difference.  I think our pick from them will end up in the 12-17 range.

So...

Boston made a ton of trades around the All-Star break, and then went on to finish the season as the second hottest team in the Eastern conference.  That was a total fluke, so that success will not carry over to next season. 

Brooklyn made a trade around the All-Star break, and then went on to finish the season strong.  That was because the trade made the team better, and so as a result that success full carry over to next season. 

Got it, sound logic.

From a talent standpoint, Brooklyn's late season success made a lot more sense than Boston's.  Brooklyn played well down the stretch because of allstar talent.  Boston played well down the stretch because of effort and execution driven by a wonder-coach.  Which is more sustainable?   I don't think either will be bottom 5 next year.  But if forced to guess which of the two is most likely to bottom out, it has to be the shakey Boston lineup.  Both picks probably end up 12-17.  Injuries can derail Brooklyn, but if they are healthy they should be a playoff team.  A lot has to go right for Boston to sneak into the playoffs again in spite of their blatant lack of talent, imo. 

On paper, Brooklyn looks solidly mediocre. Lopez is 20/10 impact player. Johnson is a borderline all star. There's talent there.  On paper, Boston sucks. Stevens proved last year he could MacGyver a .500 team out of paperclips and superglue, but it's hard to sustain quirk success.  I'll admit I'm a bit enthusiastic about the David Lee addition (though we already had a handful of borderline starter power forwards) , but how excited can you really get about a team when the best player is coming off a playoffs appearance where he averaged 8 minutes off the bench and had 8 coach decision DNP's?  Stevens has his work cut out for him and he struggled early last season finding success while balancing an overloaded roster filled with redundancies.

With all due respect, there is absolutely no sense in any of the points / arguments you're trying to make here. 

What All-Star talent did Brooklyn have at the end of the season, that they didn't have in the first half of the season? 

The only guy on the Brooklyn roster who is even CLOSE to being an All-Star talent is Brook Lopez, and for the first time in recent memory he actually played starters minutes  (72 games @ 30 MPG).  You certainly can't try to argue that Thaddeus Young (14 and 5 last season) is an All-Star talent, because that would just be plain trolling.

Also how on earth is Lopez a 20/10 player?  He's he's not averaged 20/10 once in his entire career. The closest he ever came was in 2009/10 when he averaged 18.8 points and 8.6 rebounds.  That 8.6 rebounds was also (for the record) a career high for him, and still is.  Which is downright embarrassing for  a guy with his physical profile (7'1" / 260 pound / 7'5" wingspan) who's entire game is based in the paint.  Once you factor in his size and his style of play, he must seriously be one of the worst rebounding bigs ever to play the game.

Also, if you're going to label Lopez (with his 17 / 7 in 29 minutes) as All-Star talent, then you can't really get away from awarding Isaiah Thomas (with his 19 / 5 in 29 minutes) with the same label.  If you don't then I would love to hear your reason why, since neither player actually made the All-Star team and both put up similar numbers over the course of the season.

Likewise your claim that Joe Johnson is a borderline All-Star is might have been a respectable claim back in 2013/14, but trying to make that argument for last season is quite honestly laughable.  He's 34 years old and his his Per-36 stats from last year (14.9 points, 5 rebounds, and 4.2 assists) were the worst of his career.  He's clearly on the decline and a shadow of his former self, and if those are 'border All-Star' numbers, then you must love our Celtics, because that would mean that Tyler Zeller (17 / 10 / 2.4), Jared Sullinger (17 / 10 / 2.5), Avery Bradley (16 / 3.5 / 2), Kelly Olynyk (16.5 / 7.7 / 2.8 ), Jonas Jerebko (14.1 / 9.6 / 2.0), David Lee (15.5 / 10 / 3.4) and Evan Turner (12.4 / 6.6 / 7.2) are all borderline All-Stars too.

It's simple - Boston turned their record around because they traded out their two greatest on-court liabilities and re-allocated those minutes to guys who had far, far more positive impact.

Advanced stats show that Rondo was one of the NBA's biggest liabilities at his position, with a Real Plus Minus of -3.21 (ranking him 69th out of 84 NBA Point Guards).  When Boston traded him out, they gave those minutes to Marcus Smart (+2.22, 12th among PG) and Isaiah Thomas (+1.45, 21st among PG).  That is a improvement of +5.43 when Smart is on the court, and +4.66 when Thomas is on the court.  Both are HUGE turnarounds, and that type of improvement at the Point Guard spot along is enough to generate a huge improvement as a team.

But if you look at stats shot that Jeff Green you'll see that there was a similar story at the SF spot too.   Green was statistically a major liability for us, with a a RPM of -3.56 ranking him right towards the bottom of NBA Small Forwards (68th out of 80).  When he was traded out his minutes went to a combination of Evan Turner (-1.37, 45th among Shooting Guards), Jae Crowder (-0.44, 29th among Small Forwards) and Jonas Jerebko (+2.6, 14th among Power Forwards).  This was basically a simple case of addition by subtraction, because even though not all of out players actually had a positive RPM, every one of them was a substantial improvemnt over Green regardless of whether it was Turner (+2.19), Crowder  (+3.12) or Jerebko (+6.16) - the improvement at the SF was drastic.

Now if you look at our other starters, we had no real liabilities at the other positions.  We were going just fine at SG (Bradley: -0.34), at PF (Sully: +1.66) and at C (Zeller: +0.58 / Olynyk: +3.50).

Now lets do a very rough calculation of the change between old and new scenario.

Old Roster:
Zeller: +0.58
Sully: +1.66
Green: -3.56
Bradley: -0.34
Rondo: -3.21
Net RPM: -4.87

Old Roster:
Zeller:+0.58
Sully: +1.66
Turner: -1.37
Bradley: -0.34
Smart: +2.22
Net RPM: +2.75

Not obviously this isn't the perfect scientific method for calculating this, but at a quick glance I think this easily demonstrates how the mid seasons trades made by DA could very easily have transformed this team from a really, really bad team to an actually pretty darn good one.

You may like or loathe RPM, but regardless of how you feel I think it's easy for any fan who actually watched the games to see from the eye test that the above makes a lot of sense.  Even when Rondo was on the team, we always seemed to play much better when he came off the court, and Smart came one - we tended to close gaps, build leads, etc.  Likewise I think we all felt like we played much better as a team when we had Turner, Jerebko or Crowder on the court as opposed to when Green was out there.

Now lets look at the Brooklyn trade. 

Brooklyn traded Kevin Garnett to the Timberwolves in exchange for Theddeus Young, right?  Well Kevin Garnett had an RPM last year of  +0.90 (25th among PF) while Theddeus Young had an RPM of +1.20 (18th among Small Forwards). 

So Brooklyn have essentially traded one plus contributor for another slightly more plus' contributor.  This trade improves Brooklyn as a team, but only by +0.3 which is barely (if at all) significant.

Ultimately, that was really the only significant trade that Brooklyn made last year, so that move alone is nowhere near enough (according to stats) to account for Brooklyn's late season surge. 

Now even if you completely ignore the statistics, it's pretty blatantly obvious that Boston made far more in the way or roster changes (trading away two starters) than Brooklyn trading away one starter) did, so no matter how you look at it I cannot understand how you can possible try to argue that Brooklyn's late season surge is a result of roster changes, while Boston's was just a result of "last minute increase in hustle". 

It just makes no sense whatsoever.

Boston clearly made more drastic changes to their roster mid-season than Brooklyn did, so the "roster changes" argument is far more justifiable for Boston than it is for Brooklyn.  It is far more believable that Boston could have made a huge turnaround as a team after all those roster changes, then it is that Brooklyn could have made such a big turnaroud after one small roster change.  Especially if you're only real argument for Brooklyn is based on the the supposed new-found bond between Lopez and Young - yeah, that's very sustainable!

No matter how you look at it, Boston had a better season AND that did more to improve this season.  There is absolutely not a single rational justification as to why anyone would believe that Brooklyn would finish with a better record then Boston this year.  Even if injuries come in to play, Boston has so much depth that their impact would be minimal - while one or two injuries could absolutely cripple the nets.

Neat. I anticipate both brooklyn and Boston to be in the hunt for the last couple playoff seeds in the Least.  It would be a surprise to see either in the bottom 5, but I'd say Boston's success last year was the most flukey for a variety of reasons... thus they are the most likely candidate for a disaster season of the two teams. Of the two teams, Boston's success is the least repeatable.  I think we can all acknowledge that winning games without NBA starters is a heck of an achievement.  Much easier to finish .500 with an all-star low post scorer, 7x all-star shooting guard, and additional veteran starters.

Im going to go ahead and do this for crimson stallion. Lar you just got absolutely owned. Your response is laughable, you make assertions based on nothing in the face of solid rationalized, and quantified observations. TP to you stallion for throwing this in the face of this good old fashioned attempt at a troll.

I'll take your word for it.  I didn't read it.   Brooklyn will be a borderline playoff team.  They should be on a par with last year.   *shrug*

I skimmed his post and saw some stuff about Rondo, Jeff Green, Tyler Zeller, +/- stats... blahdedah... I did see a quasi-relevant comment about Brook Lopez not officially being a 20/10 player on account of his rebounds never exceeding 9.  Ok?  He's arguably the best low post player in the game.  If healthy, Brooklyn's pick isn't going to end up in the Top 5.   We're all rooting for it, though.  Here's hoping.

If it seems like I'm mailing in this argument, it's because there's not much of an argument to have.  Brooklyn has made the playoffs 3 years straight.  They got better towards the end of the year.  Either people think losing Deron Williams dooms them, a handful of Eastern conference teams will lap them, or they are betting on Brook Lopez getting injured again. Trying to explain this "yeah I know they have been solidly mediocre 3 years straight and got better late last year, but they will be one of the 5 worst teams in the league" theory with advance stats seems silly to me. 

[chambers]

I wouldn't count on Brooklyn sucking.  They finished the season strong.  Brook Lopez and Thad Young made a difference.  I think our pick from them will end up in the 12-17 range.

This is exactly what I thought too. Then they traded Plumlee, KG left, Teletovic went down, Johnson got older and had his 5th straight season of decline.

Lopez is a career 15 pt 5 rebound guy with average defense at best.
Thadeus is okay but is he any better than Taj Gibson?

Anyway, where they fall off the most from last season is their bench.
Their rotation is one of the thinnest/poorest in the NBA.

Look at their roster. When Bargani is the best player you can bring in off the bench, and your starting 5 is already poor, then you're in trouble.

Seriously take a look. They have no All Stars, 3 guys that can average more than 10 points a game and some D Leaguers.
That team is WAY poorer than last year and the rest of the East got better.

www.NBA.com/Nets/Roster

[LarBrd33]

I wouldn't count on Brooklyn sucking.  They finished the season strong.  Brook Lopez and Thad Young made a difference.  I think our pick from them will end up in the 12-17 range.

This is exactly what I thought too. Then they traded Plumlee, KG left, Teletovic went down, Johnson got older and had his 5th straight season of decline.

I'm getting pretty bored of this topic, but i'll just briefly touch on this.

- Plumlee was irrelevant in the second half of the season.
- Swapping KG for Thad Young gave them a major positive Jolt
- Teletovic?  Lol
- Johnson... eh... still a solid player
- Lopez was beasting over the past three months of the season.  That makes a difference as a healthy Lopez is a force down low.

Agree to disagree.  Hope you guys end up right.

[BDeCosta26]

lets not confuse 'rational, grounded thinking that arrives at a positive result' with 'wishful thinking.'

Just because both are positive doesn't mean they are equivalent.

Here here. The Nets clearly aren't just trying to max out W's I'm the win column. If they were, they wouldn't have bought out Deron Williams, shopped Joe Johnson hard and traded Plumlee to move up in the draft for Hollis-Jefferson. They'll be looking for similar trades that let them gain back 1st round picks or young prospects. I'd be surprised if all 5 of that starting 5 isn't injured or traded by years end.

Besides, Idk if Jack/Bogodanvic/Johnson/Young/Lopez is one of the best 8 starting fives in the the East. We might not be either, but we have some of the best depth in the league. They don't really have any depth. Playing Bargs and Lopez together is going to be an absolute disaster on D and they'll get eaten alive on the boards and he's probably their best bench player. Nevermind Lopez injury history I just can't imagine that team winning 40 games. No way IMO, they're gonna have to have everything go right, no one get hurt and no one get traded for them to give us a pick higher than number 10 or 11.

We have good reason to be excited about that Nets pick. Even the most optimistic projections say it's pretty unlikely we don't get at least a top 12-14 pick. One Lopez injury and that pick is almost guaranteed top 5. They're just not a very good team. Got a couple decent names, but they have no depth and a whole lot of holes. Defense chief among them.

[fairweatherfan]

I think the floor is higher for the Celts, but the ceiling for the Celts isn't much higher than the Nets.  Both teams are pretty mediocre.

I agree with this, though I'd also say we're in a stronger position to acquire a roof-raiser or two this season.

[chambers]

I wouldn't count on Brooklyn sucking.  They finished the season strong.  Brook Lopez and Thad Young made a difference.  I think our pick from them will end up in the 12-17 range.

This is exactly what I thought too. Then they traded Plumlee, KG left, Teletovic went down, Johnson got older and had his 5th straight season of decline.

I'm getting pretty bored of this topic, but i'll just briefly touch on this.

- Plumlee was irrelevant in the second half of the season.
- Swapping KG for Thad Young gave them a major positive Jolt
- Teletovic?  Lol
- Johnson... eh... still a solid player
- Lopez was beasting over the past three months of the season.  That makes a difference as a healthy Lopez is a force down low.

Agree to disagree.  Hope you guys end up right.

I hope you see the irony in saying 'lol' to Teletovic and Plumlee but somehow have faith in Bargani, Larkin and Willy Reed whilst the rest of the East gets considerably better? lol

Their starting PG is Jarrett Jack. Their back up is Larkin- not a typo.
Their starting SG is Johnson. Their back ups are Markel Brown and Wayne Ellingtion with some Karasev thrown in.
Their SF is Bogdanovic with Karasev and Quincy Miller.
Their PF is Thadeus with Bargani, Willy Reed and Thomas Robinson.
Their C is Lopez with Bargani and Willy Reed. That's not a typo. Bargani and Willy Reed.

That is arguably the poorest line up in the NBA or is definitely in the conversation and it's a bottom 5 defense.

They are going to be terrible. They are an injury away from being a genuine dumpster fire.

[chambers]

I think the floor is higher for the Celts, but the ceiling for the Celts isn't much higher than the Nets.  Both teams are pretty mediocre.

I agree with this, though I'd also say we're in a stronger position to acquire a roof-raiser or two this season.

They literally have two maybe three guys who would start on playoff teams being Johnson and Lopez. Young is solid and would start for some poorer NBA teams but not unless he's the 4th/5th option.

It's literally D Leaguers and some washed up starting caliber guys.
Take a look...Try and put together a team that wins over 30 games from this car crash, let alone can handle one injury to any position.

www.nba.com/nets/roster

[chambers]

Johnson isn't a bordeline all-star and hasn't been one for years.  The only thing Johnson was ever exceptional at was scoring and that has been on a serious decline over the past three seasons.

If you want to be a contrarian wet blanket, is it too much to ask that you AT LEAST base it on facts?

Jesus Joe was an All Star in 2014? He's also still one of the best late game scorers in the league, shooting a higher percentage over the past three seasons in close, end-of-game situations than Lebron, Curry, Melo, Kobe, even our guy Pierce.

Come on, let's not let facts get in the way.

To be fair, Johnson has seen a steady decline for the past 5 seasons.
Last year was his worst season since 2003. It was his second poorest shooting season since 2009. He's 34 years old and his defense has declined even faster than his offensive game.
He's always been a legendary clutch player but for the other 99% of the season he's going to be fringe NBA starting material.

Anyway, watching opposing guards/wings work their way into the paint against a line up of Jarrett Jack, Joe Johnson, with Bogdanovic holding the fort should be pretty interesting. Probably a bit sad