The Nets At The Break: Sorry, But This Isn’t Going to Be That Fun

Vincent Carchietta-USA TODAY Sports

The perpetually chaotic Nets went into the NBA’s All-Star break on a high note with a 116-105 victory over the injury-impacted Heat last Wednesday thanks to a magnificent outing by forward Mikal Bridges, who notched a career-high 45 points in front of a beleaguered sellout audience at Barclays Center.

Bridges was one of four new Nets starters acquired in the stunning trades contrived in advance of the February 9 deadline that sent superstars Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving out of town after three-plus seasons of turmoil fed by injuries and Irving’s off-court behaviors. What’s left is said to be a more likable and defensively versatile team—with Bridges, Spencer Dinwiddie, Cam Johnson, and Dorian Finney-Smith joining the cast, Brooklyn is now able to offer more intriguing lineups that feature above-average length and three-point shooting.

The word that is often being thrown around to describe this newly-configured group is “fun.”

Sorry, but I just can’t get onboard with that, at least not yet. Do you know what was fun for me? Watching Durant and Irving devise and execute creative things on a basketball court on an impromptu basis. Watching even many of the league’s best opponents become helpless at preventing onslaughts from a barrage of Brooklyn buckets. Watching the Nets win games.

The problem, obviously, was with the attendance. The two stars played just 74 regular season games together, with Brooklyn going 47-27 in those contests. The team won exactly one playoff series. Such unreliability made the organization quiver at extending Irving with a max contract, which led to his trade request. Once Irving was dealt to Dallas, most knew that Durant, 34, wasn’t going to want to stick around either. The Nets reportedly worked with him so he could be delivered to his preferred destination in Phoenix.

The consensus opinion is that the Nets did about as well as could be expected in the return packages for KD and Kyrie—especially in getting a slew of draft picks to help replenish what was lost in the James Harden flip—but that’s a long way from saying that this team will be as watchable going forward without two of the NBA’s best scorers through individual efforts.

It was only two months ago when the Nets were on an 18-2 run that vaulted them back into the discussion as legitimate threats in the Eastern Conference. Now, despite their 34-24 head start, avoiding the play-in round as a six seed would be a major accomplishment.

How much fun will this team, which boasted the league’s second-highest offensive rating before Durant’s MCL sprain in Miami on January 8, be when it feels like it will struggle to reach 100 points on given nights thanks to its lack of such elite one-on-one creators?

Who will Head Coach Jacque Vaughn turn to in crunch time when defenses tighten? It wouldn’t be shocking if Vaughn, who received a contract extension on Tuesday through the 2026-27 season, has already chatted with Dinwiddie to rein in his aggression, since the point guard took just four shots during the Miami win after going 18-for-48 (37.5%) from the floor over the first three games of his return to Brooklyn. I get that the sample size since the trades is too small to extrapolate any stats, but Nets fans should remember how Dinwiddie used to get in trouble by thinking he was better than he was, too often throwing himself into trees defending the rim and then flailing his arms in disgust when he didn’t receive a favorable whistle. He was always going to be vastly more efficient when playing off the high usage of Luka Doncic in Dallas than in an alpha role.

Unfortunately, Vaughn has few such go-to alternatives. He seems reluctant to ride the Cam Thomas wave beyond 20-minute stints as a scorer off the bench despite the sophomore’s three-game outbreak earlier this month. A perplexed John Hollinger of The Athletic had a good line when he tweeted, “Imagine having three consecutive 40-point games and then finding yourself behind Joe Harris in the rotation.”

That leaves Bridges, who has yet to show that he can thrive in such a capacity on a consistent basis, the fantastic Miami performance notwithstanding. His previous career high was 34 points attained two years ago, one of two other outings where he exceeded 30 points in his 368 games played.

To clarify, I concur that Bridges is a winning player, levels above his similarly-sized wing teammates Finney-Smith, Johnson, Harris, and Royce O’Neale. It’s just that the Suns didn’t win many games when Devin Booker and Chris Paul were out with injuries this season and Bridges was thrust into a greater offensive role. To expect Bridges to carry Brooklyn over its final 24 games, starting Friday night in Chicago, and into the playoffs requires a gigantic leap of faith.

Further dousing Brooklyn’s fun quotient is the elephant in the room that is the ongoing Ben Simmons saga. At least Vaughn seems to recognize the diminishing returns of pairing Simmons with non-shooting center Nic Claxton now that he doesn’t have KD and Kyrie around to bail out congested offensive possessions with premium mid-range efficiency. They’ve played just 6 minutes together over the last three games, during which the Nets scored 9 points, per NBA.com (again, small sample size disclaimer).

I couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry when I heard Vaughn’s extensive reply last week to a question about Simmons’ fit on the team. “You put another big next to Ben, then you’ve got to figure out what the spacing is around him,” Vaughn said. “Then if you put a playmaker next to him, then you’ve got to figure out what Ben looks like without the basketball. Then if you go small with Ben, then you’ve got to figure out, ‘Can you rebound enough with him?’”

What I found most tragically amusing was that all of the above could have been resolved had General Manager Sean Marks obtained a stretch five at the deadline. I mean, he couldn’t match what the Lakers gave Orlando for Mo Bamba—a player (guard Patrick Beverley) the Magic immediately waived, a second-round pick, and cash? Not that Bamba would have guaranteed the Nets much of a marginal elevation in the long run, but with his adequate three-point shooting and rim protection—boom, you at least would have had a decent Simmons solution for 15 minutes per game.

Alas, whether it was during the abbreviated superstar era or anything before or since, missed opportunities are nothing new for Nets fans. And it’s not fun.