The Common Thread Nets Must Find In Draft

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Many Nets fans are watching with envy as their vastly more celebrated neighbors to the west continue on their march to their apparent destiny, with the Knicks just three wins away from their elusive first NBA title in 53 years.

The 50th anniversary of the Nets franchise’s last Championship just passed, and that was when they toiled in the defunct ABA. Worse, the current situation in Brooklyn has them so far removed from contention that the ultimate glory seems beyond the realm of the possible.

A whole bundle of things have to coalesce for a basketball team to reach the highest level, but what has always been most necessary is having that one player who can take over a game in the fourth quarter. You know the names from the last half century: Kareem, Bird, MJ, Kobe, etc.

Despite what you may have been reading in the run-up to the June 23 NBA Draft, these guys have come in all shapes and sizes with varying pedigrees. Jalen Brunson, should the Knicks complete their mission, couldn’t be any more different than previous Finals MVPs Nikola Jokic or Jaylen Brown. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, last year’s honoree, shares with fellow point guard Brunson a love for three-level daggers and flopping, but SGA is of a leaner body type and a more advanced defender.

Despite the 6-foot 2 Brunson’s relative weakness on that end, the Knicks are managing just fine. In this era where switching is all the rage, how many times in these playoffs have you seen Brunson in a bad matchup? New York’s hedge-and-recover schemes, with near flawless rotation executions from a host of strong wing defenders in the supporting cast, allows it to protect Brunson from incessant targeting.

Meanwhile, Brunson has been the Knicks’ rock whenever they need a bucket. And he does it without the eye-popping traits measured at the NBA Draft Combine. He doesn’t blow by defenders or outjump them; he utilizes elite footwork and body positioning to get to his preferred spots.

Oh, and then he makes shots.

Which is why it is so baffling to me that many in the media are giving short shrift to Arkansas guard Darius Acuff Jr. when analyzing where Brooklyn should go with the Draft’s No. 6 overall pick.

To be clear, Nets General Manager Sean Marks is keeping a tight lid on the process, with few leaks as to who the team has even brought in for closer examination. What so-called pundits are “hearing” could be smokescreens to hide Marks’ intentions.

The latest darling of the week prospect is Tennessee forward Nate Ament, who, at 6-foot 10, has the pundits drooling. I’m not going to predict Ament’s career trajectory; he may indeed develop into a poor man’s Kevin Durant as per some evaluators. Or he could bust. This is tricky stuff.

However, we do have some data points to digest, even with adjusting for caveats like injuries. Ament had an up-and-down freshman season while hobbled some down the stretch. You like that he gets to the line a ton (7.1 FTAs per game, the nation’s 29th highest rate); his 33.3% three-point shooting percentage is rather meh. In addition, he averaged 2.3 assists and 2.3 turnovers per game, which suggests he’d have a lot of work to do to understand how to navigate professional scenarios.

Acuff, by comparison, was remarkably consistent and efficient. One could argue that he had the best freshman season of any in the illustrious stable of Head Coach John Calipari’s point guards that includes Derrick Rose, John Wall, Devin Booker, Jamal Murray, DeAron Fox, Tyrese Maxey, and, yes, SGA. How are folks dismissing Acuff’s 44% three-point shooting rate, the ninth-best in the country last season, and the approximately 3:1 assist-to-turnover ratio on nearly 30% usage in a decent conference?

Because he’s 6-foot 3 and looked terrible on defense. The same things that dropped Brunson out of the first round in the 2018 Draft, not to mention the shades that once were thrown at Stephen Curry before the Warriors stole him at No. 7 overall back in 2009.

Again, no one can know with any certainty how prospects will pan out. Still, the goal for this Nets Draft should be to sift through the muck of data and video evidence to find that one potential difference maker, especially after striking out (in my opinion) five times in that regard last year. Sure, Egor Demin might be a nice player. But I view his ceiling as a complementary piece, not the guy you want with the ball in his hands to create the winning play with the game on the line.

In a great scene in the baseball movie “Moneyball”, the A’s GM Billy Beane played by Brad Pitt admonishes his scouts for focusing too much on the measurables, “like we’re selling jeans, like we’re looking for Fabio.” Forget those biases. If we’ve learned anything from recent (and soon to-be) basketball champions, sometimes the evaluation can be as simple as how well the player can put the ball in the basket when it matters.