Brings me back to November 12, when the Nets were 4-5 and many people were panicking (yes, myself included). In fact, somebody questioned if we would even be needing the swap with BKN (I think it was a joke.).
Since that time, they have gone 4-28. Can you imagine it? What would this board have done if we could somehow have gone into the future and seen where they would be at this point? That we'd be at the halfway point and their closest "competitor" would be four games "behind" them. Unbelievable.
The only thing that the Nets have going for them is that Jeremy Lin will soon return. No, he is not the world's greatest point guard, but their offense clearly plays much better with him on the court.
Mike
Yes, actually we can imagine it. Some of us said it was a small sample size against mediocre competition fueled by unsustainable 3 point shooting percentages. The law of averages evened things out.
I still expect that Brooklyn will go on a run towards the end of the season. Their schedule is too favorable, too many home games, too few back-to-backs that they'll get some encouragement at seasons' end. I'm still expecting that they'll win somewhere about 22-23 games.
I said many years ago (when the trade went down) that the 2016-2018 picks may very well end up in the lottery. I said a couple of years ago that the picks may very well end up in the top 5. I've been steadfastly bullish about these picks because:
(1) Originally you could see that the Nets roster was going to get old FAST. Deron Williams was about to turn 30, KG and Pierce were too old already and thus the only real younger asset the Nets had was Lopez. That was it. That was a team with a very limited window. Also, all the advanced metrics showed that their W-L record was abnormally good for a team with such a poor point differential. In other words, they were overachieving and the team was already getting past their prime.
(2) Without some great trades - and their ownership was a mess which isn't conducive to making great trades - the Nets were going to have to try to restock their roster on one pick in 2015 and a bunch of 2nd rounders. Hitting it out of the park in the lottery is hard enough. Hitting it out of the park with a mid-1st on one try is almost impossible. They were going to have a really hard time back filling the aging talent.
(3) Figuring that the team would be in decline at precisely the same time the cap exploded, I knew that the Nets were not going to be able to overspend to get FAs. When 15-20 teams have max space and the money is the same, the Nets really had very little to offer prospective FAs. So while some people were posting how the Nets were a player for KD this past offseason, I said they would have a hard time getting even 2nd tier FAs. And that's what happened.
That's why I posted years ago that the Nets situation was the worst in the league. No young talent. No picks. No ability to attract FAs. And here it is. Of course, I'm not always right. I said that Trump would never voted into the Oval Office...