Welp .... maybe Ainge can turn the 3 or 4 picks in the 10-20 range the Celts will have in this next draft into a prospect he really likes.
Didn't work last year, but maybe it will work this time around. We can't use all those draft picks anyway.
The Nets win two in a row, and their pick is now destined to be "in the 10-20 range"?
Let me remind you, they still have the fourth worst record in the League.
They're also, what, 5-7 in the last few weeks?
Look out for the Nets!!!
It's just laughable. 35+ mins for Brook, Thad and Joe Johnson. Another 30 for Jarrett Jack. Someone will go down, others will be traded.
As you pointed out, leaping from the fourth worst record to the 10th-20th worst record truly shows the bias of some to insist that the Nets will not be as bad as they've looked.
Those are pretty standard minutes for starters.
From a deliberately uninformed perspective for the sake of appearing objective, 35+ mins a night might not seem like a big deal for a "starter." When you remove generality from the issue and apply specific context however, your narrative that the Nets will fend off enough losses to crush Boston's dreams is harder to follow.
Let's start from least risky to most:
Jarrett Jack: Averaging a few more minutes and a few more shots per game than his career averages. Not a ton of added stress, though his offensive efficiency is something to watch as the season goes on. The Nets can't afford to have Jack play worse than he has thus far, and likely need him to play better if they want to avoid the embarrassment of gifting the Celtics a top 5 pick. More 30+ minute nights and gameplans that require Jack to be one of the team's highest scorers certainly isn't the conventional way of insuring that Jack continues to shoot above 40%.
Also contradictory to your entire Nets narrative is the acknowledgment that Jack is one of the most likely Nets to get traded. He has a friendly deal and holds almost zero future value to the Nets at age 32. He's playing well enough to catch a contender's eye.
Thad Young: You have to go back a couple of years to see Thaddeus Young score at this pace and play this many minutes. He has never scored so efficiently on such a high volume of shots, though scattered throughout his career are years in which he either shot this well or took as many shots. Though not inconceivable that Young remains somewhat of a scoring force in a sizable amount of minutes, there are too many gaps in his career data to assemble a pattern that would suggest scoring as many points as he has on the amount of FGs he's attempted in as many minutes as he's played is sustainable. And it is entirely ignorant of his career data to assert that his rebounding rate is sustainable. Couple that with a defensive rate not seen since 2012 Thad Young (one who carried a much lighter offensive burden), and it's quite hard to imagine Young combining career-bests or near-career-bests in all of the most notable facets of his game (scoring, rebounding, defense) while continuing to play "starter" minutes.
Joe Johnson: The only reason Joe Johnson isn't the riskiest of them all to break down is because he's already broken down, and still playing superstar minutes (35 a game). Johnson is terrible. 35% from the field. 27% from downtown. Still offers average rebounding and distributing for a shooting guard, scores a lot less, gets to the line about half as many times as he did in his prime. Truly awful advanced metrics across the board. I would be sympathetic and suggest that he might start shooting better if not for a boatload of minutes that are more likely than not to wear out a player his age even further.
Brook Lopez: Lopez is playing per game about what he was in the first few years of his career, and little bit more than he has in more recent years of his career. He's taking about the amount of shots we would expect a fully recovered Brook Lopez to take (best reference year: 2010-11, when Brook followed a healthy 82 game campaign with a consecutive healthy 82 game campaign at 35 mpg). He's shooting a little bit worse, but it is legitimate to expect this to remain below his career average because the Nets have few offensive options and defenses will always be able to key in on Lopez. His rebounding and blocked shots are what they are expected to be and there's little reason to expect change. His defensive metrics are a bit better than one would predict from previous career data, but that likely has to do with playing alongside Thad Young and RHJ, which shouldn't change. So what's the problem? Brook should remain pretty much what he's been for the first 17 games of this season, right?
Lopez has broken the same bone twice in his foot. Similar if not exactly identical injuries have derailed the careers of other 7-footers relied on for "starter" minutes (Yao, Big Z). It is inexplicably optimistic to weigh Lopez's injury history and the current stress being weighed on his body and conclude that it's more likely than not that he finishes the season fully healthy without diminished statistical output.
So, to summarize: of Nets players, there are four that hold significance and career data to project their remaining season. The Nets' two best bets to keep up the individual levels of play that have contributed, to varying degree, 5 wins in 18 tries are Jarrett Jack and Thaddeus Young. The two most distinct reasons why both are smarter bets than their teammates (JJ and Lopez) are because both are in the prime of their careers and without serious injury concern. However, Jack also happens to be one of the likeliest Nets to be traded precisely because he is reliably productive and healthy, while Young is almost definitely playing over his head. The Nets' 3rd best (or 2nd worst) bet is one of their worst players, Joe Johnson, whose probability of becoming worse is higher than his probability of becoming better based on the historical impact his level of playing time has on a player his age. Doubly [dang]ing for Brooklyn is his contract, which makes him the least likely of the 4 aforementioned players to get moved at all, let alone for something of notable value. The Nets' 4th best (or worst) bet is their best player, Brook Lopez, who has admirably but nonetheless dangerously handled an on-the-court activity level almost definitely unsustainable for a player with his injury history.
It is quite easy to maintain argumentative legitimacy when the discussion is kept general with terms like "starter," but it is much more difficult to hide the partiality behind this whole "the Nets aren't that bad" camp when you try to combine as many specifics and as much context as possible. Upon closer analysis than you offered, for 3 of the 4 Nets players I mentioned those "starter" minutes have an obviously higher potential for consequences than the vaguely defined, typical NBA starter. And when you add managerial context to the picture (who's most likely/least likely to get moved), Brooklyn's immediate and long-term outlook reveal themselves to be even bleaker than imagine. Brooklyn's most dependable (Jack) and/or positively impactful guys (Young) are the ones most likely to be traded, while their least dependable (Lopez) and/or negatively impactful players (J. Johnson) are the least likely. That's a bad recipe for success.
Topic: Official 2015-16 Brooklyn Nets Season Watch Thread (21-59, 3rd slot as of 4/12) (Read 577662 times)