Enjoy This Detour From The Nets Tank Route While You Can

AP Photo/Seth Wenig

Break up the Brooklyn Nets.

No, seriously, break up the Nets before they win too many more games and blow this season’s tanking strategy demanded by a large segment of the fan base.

Brooklyn won its fourth contest in six games over the last nine days by holding off visiting Memphis in the final seconds for a 106-104 victory on Monday night. At 4-4, they are listed as the Eastern Conference’s fifth seed. Just like everyone predicted.

Except a fretting pro-tank force is hyperventilating. “What are they doing?”, they cry.

Hold your horses, folks. Check back with me in two weeks, after the Nets play five of six on the road against significantly stiffer competition, and then let’s see where they stand. Brooklyn has Boston and New York twice and solo trips to New Orleans and undefeated Cleveland. Good luck to them getting one of those. The Nets’ slate doesn’t ease up much thereafter, with only two of the nest 10 opponents expected to be among the lottery finishers this season.

Still, I would agree with those who worry that the Nets as currently constructed aren’t bad enough to win the race to the bottom. They have too many professional veterans like Dorian Finney-Smith, Cam Johnson, and Dennis Schroder who understand from experience what it takes to win in this league and won’t just lie down because it might be best for the franchise’s future.

I continue to believe that the Las Vegas 19.5 over/under win total for the season was egregiously disrespectful to those players. You can see it in their get-after-it attitudes and performances down the stretch of tight games. Finney-Smith knocked down five three-pointers in Monday night’s second half, including the go-ahead shot with 1:13 remaining, all the while battling the bigger Grizzlies for 50/50 loose balls and rebounds.

So at some point, General Manager Sean Marks will have to make a decision: Does he give this group a chance to show out the best it can be, or does he completely tear it all down to ensure the highest lottery odds?

It’s easy for pro-tanking fans to make that call. They’re not the ones who have to live in a hopeless environment that can take extra time to disinfect, even with a top-3 Draft pick en route.

Remember, Duke’s Cooper Flagg, who seems to be the fans’ choice, is only 17. For all his court vision/versatility gifts, he’s not going to dominate the NBA immediately upon his entrance. He may one day develop into a more athletic Luka Doncic type (Flagg will have to improve his three-point shooting), or he could be destined for a lower tier. Who knows? But do you want him, or any of the top prospects in this supposedly loaded Draft class, to start out his career here in a bare-bones situation with almost no continuity from veteran leadership?

That could still happen. Since I don’t believe the Nets will be able to maintain even a .500 pace for very long, I do expect Marks to start the process of taking bids for some of his veterans by the end of the month. Finney-Smith, who has a player option after the season, will likely be the most coveted. Johnson, despite two more seasons under contract, could also be sent packing by the February 8 trade deadline. Schroder, Ben Simmons, and Bojan Bogdanovic (if he ever gets healthy) are buyout candidates if not traded.

There are 30 more games, more than a third of an NBA season, to be played after the deadline. By then, an unwieldy number of minutes will probably be allocated to Brooklyn’s young players and G-Leaguers. Trust me, it will be a slog to the finish line.    

So enjoy this while you can, Nets fans. With the exception of Sunday’s loss to the similarly-tanking Pistons, Brooklyn is playing the type of gritty basketball you wished they had brought to the court last season. Despite talent deficits virtually every night, the Nets are putting forth the effort and connectivity on both ends that has made watching these games pleasurable from a fan perspective. It’s an unexpected and welcome surprise, no matter where you stand on the tank issue.

It also shows what good coaching can bring to an NBA team (and how bad Jacque Vaughn really was). Jordi Fernandez, a rookie Head Coach, has the Nets moving the ball and bodies on offense and rotating furiously on defense, two crucial components to winning basketball that were inconsistent at best last season.

No coach, however, can move a team forward in this league if his engines are removed, and that’s when the tank will drag the Nets down. I can’t say that I can’t wait for that.