With Nets In Insurmountable Hole, A Look At What Could Be Next

BrooklynNets.com

Well, this horrific Nets season is practically over. Brooklyn’s 102-97 loss to heavily-favored Philadelphia on Thursday night at Barclays Center has put them in an impossible 3-0 hole in this best-of-seven Eastern Conference quarterfinals series.

Whether the Nets can salvage a game to avoid the ignominy of a second consecutive first round sweep is irrelevant. This team isn’t good, “earning” their playoff seed on the backs of the head start provided by superstars Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving before their trades at the February deadline abruptly closed what was once a championship window. Don’t be fooled by the post-trade “newness” excuse either —this configuration would have landed in the lottery with a full training camp and an entire season to congeal.

Sorry if it’s bad form to trash a body before it’s officially declared dead, but what else is there to dissect? Game 3? Fine—the Nets played their hearts out like they did in Game 2, but since they have no answers for Sixers MVP candidate Joel Embiid, they’ve been doubling him all series, which leaves them at the mercy of Philly’s perimeter shooters. Tyrese Maxey is having the time of his life from all the open looks he’s been getting in this series. In addition, Brooklyn couldn’t: A) Make enough 3s. and B) control their defensive boards. Oh, and their crunch time offense sucks.

In other words, same-old, same-old.

I could point to the refs allowing Embiid to stay in the game after he kicked Brooklyn center Nic Claxton in the nether region early in the first quarter, but then they inexplicably ejected former Net James Harden in the second half for a less-intentional foul. No one knows what would have happened if the calls were reversed, but the Sixers do have a knack for finding ways to win no matter who is on the floor while the post-trade Nets have a record of pulling defeats out of the jaws of victories. So, it’s conceivable that the Nets could have had their butts handed to them by Philadelphia’s backup center Paul Reed had the refs gotten it right.   

The real analysis relates to what Brooklyn will do next. Very few players have distinguished themselves in the postseason—pretty much just the Phoenix Twins of Mikal Bridges and Cam Johnson—while most of the others have been inconsistent at best, bitterly disappointing at worst.

The larger issue is that the Nets will continue to be doomed until they acquire a legitimate star who can both create offense out of isolation and also elevate the supporting cast. For all of Bridges’ wonderful progression into a 25 ppg scorer as a Net, he is not that guy, despite all the lavishly laudatory press he’s been receiving of late. I’d put him in the C.J. McCollum category (on offense), a borderline All-Star who was at his best when he ran with Damian Lillard in Portland. I don’t think you can compete for a title if either McCollum or Bridges is your best player.

Who could that star be? It’s too early to tell who will become available—many times they pop up out of nowhere, like with KD and Kyrie’s trade requests. The good news is that Brooklyn recouped some assets should they attempt to go the superstar route again.  

Here are a few other items that should be atop General Manager Sean Marks’ offseason priority list:

1) Trade Ben Simmons

Marks should be calling on his old friends in San Antonio to ask them to do him a solid. Oh, it’s going to cost Brooklyn to offload the remaining two years and approximately $78 million owed to a piece of damaged goods from head to toe. But it must be done.

Simmons suited up for just 42 games after joining the Nets at last year’s trade deadline, spending the last two months in street clothes due to back issues that weren’t completely resolved from microdiscectomy surgery last summer. When he did play, he was nowhere near the All-Star level from his earlier Sixers days. The back (and knee) woes contributed to some of it, but there still remains an underlying mental block that had him shying away from contact in order to avoid getting sent to the foul line.

Accepting Simmons as part of the James Harden flip at the 2022 deadline was Marks’ most egregious error of his tenure, and it’s time to reckon with the sunk costs. Maybe one of Brooklyn’s two first-rounders this year (Nos. 21 and 22 overall) plus a second-rounder to ease Simmons into some team’s free cap space can get it done.

2) Re-sign Cam Johnson

Since Johnson is a pending restricted free agent, the Nets will be able to match a competitor’s offer sheet. Houston is rumored to be interested in making one. The Nets shouldn’t wait.

According to reports, Johnson rejected Phoenix’s original proposal of four years at $72 million in the belief his market would be closer to a $20 million AAV by the summer. That can work for Brooklyn. Per Spotrac.com, Bridges is due escalating amounts from $21.7 million next season to $24.9 million for the 2025-26 season, an extraordinarily team-friendly structure. Hopefully, Marks will be able to preempt an offer sheet for Johnson with a mutual agreement on a four-year deal in the $80 million neighborhood that will be enough to entice him to stick around Brooklyn with his pal.

3) Acquire a second center (preferably a floor spacer)

My evergreen complaint.

It was outrageous to me from the beginning that Marks had his team go into this season with just Claxton and sophomore Day’Ron Sharpe as his only two legitimate big men. Simmons doesn’t count, since he had made his mark as a perimeter defender and was noticeably out of place when tasked with interior defensive responsibilities.

That Marks allowed the roster to remain this way into the postseason was worse.

The Nets could have made a play for Mo Bamba, Kevin Love, or someone of that ilk whose name wasn’t made public at the trade deadline and buyout market. Someone to give them 12-15 minutes to help with rebounding and floor spacing.

Since Simmons has been injured and Sharpe has been mostly unplayable, the Nets have been forced to use Royce O’Neale and Dorian Finney-Smith, a pair of wings, to defend opposing bigs like Embiid for long stretches. Give them credit for battling, but it really isn’t fair to them.

Unless you’re the Warriors, small ball tends to get exposed in the playoffs, only Marks has been slow to learn that lesson. Every year, the Nets go into their matchup massively undersized because of Marks’ obstinance on this issue. And they continue to get burned. After Claxton was also ejected in Game 3 with 8:48 remaining in the fourth quarter, Brooklyn was outscored, 21-10.

Marks can’t say that he didn’t see it coming.

4) Acquire a point guard

This is not meant to be another one of my Spencer Dinwiddie bash sessions, so allow me to merely suggest that Marks needs to do better here. With a higher quality lead guard, you will see a vast difference in how the Nets approach the ends of close games.

Again, I don’t have the answer as to possible viable targets, though I was among the Nets fans who raised an eyebrow when I saw Lillard sitting in the front row at Barclays Center for Game 3. Assuming for this purpose that Lillard asks out and Portland management is accommodating, the Nets could center a package around Dinwiddie, Dorian Finney-Smith, Cam Thomas, and the requisite picks. In addition to the extra 2023 first-round pick Phoenix provided from the KD deal, the Net’s Draft cupboard, some of which are swaps, includes two first-rounders in 2025 plus three each in 2027 and 2029. That’s a nice stash that can be dipped into if the star is aligned.  

I only picked Lillard as an example of the type of player Marks should go after so that his club’s offense isn’t so gruesome in tight contests. Whoever that ends up being, how great would it be if Marks could get this and 1) above done in one fell swoop?