SR – NBA Bubble Breakdowns: #22 Brooklyn Nets

And alas…an actual basketball article that we here at Sneaker Reporter are fortunate enough to give you, the reader, during this tumultuous year known as 2020.

Since the season readies for its eventual resumption on July 30th, we’re going to be bringing you some key facts and season-in-reviews within 22 breakdowns that will be done for the 22 teams heading into Orlando in pursuit of a championship. Keep in mind, these team breakdowns could very well change up regarding the progressing status of players’ options to opt-out due to injury, or if they get infected by the Coronavirus. As teams head their way to South Florida, let’s get to the first official team of this 22-team countdown on our list: the Brooklyn Nets.

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 Brooklyn’s Season In Review (30-34, 7th in the East)

The Nets’ 2019-2020 season was supposed to be an eight-month period that was supposed to center around letting new Nets Guard Kyrie Irving find his bearings amongst his brand-new adversaries in the Barclays Center while his partner-in-crime Kevin Durant healed from his ruptured Achilles suffered during Game 5 of the 2019 NBA Finals.

And as part of that plan, Irving was projected to lead this massively altered Nets roster back to the postseason for a second-straight season even if Durant wouldn’t be able to assist his new teammate to obtain a deep playoff streak. As fate would have it, that wasn’t the case and in Irving’s case, his on-court absence was a double-edged sword for a guard-dense Nets team that, albeit, was able to squeak out 30 wins during the season but only experience Irving’s dynamic productivity for just 20 games until Irving was sidelined for the rest of the season due to a shoulder impingement and surgery on that injured joint.

This Nets team was marred by an injury to a substantial amount of their core pieces, like Spencer Dinwiddie and Caris LeVert for a slew of games that prompted the Nets to only grab the seventh seed in the East, but it could have been worse. In fact, the Nets’ defensive effort prompted them to acquire a spot in the top-10 for defensive ratings across the league’s landscape.

Additionally, now ex-head coach Kenny Atkinson pushed the Nets to get some pretty impressive wins under his belt, up until his firing on March 7.

Remember that key victory on March 3 against the Celtics that saw the Nets (and most notably, Caris LeVert, overcome a 21-point deficit as LeVert ended up dropping 51 on an injury-maligned Celtics for that exciting overtime win? Or the first road game without Kenny Atkinson coaching courtside on March 10 inside the Staples Center, which saw a group of Nets reserves find a way to counter LeBron and Anthony Davis’ Lakers thanks to a game-winning elbow jumper by Spencer Dinwiddie with 28.4 seconds left on the clock, just hours before the season was abruptly paused one day later?

Another mark on their defensive prowess when pieces like Jarrett Allen and DeAndre Jordan dominating the glass: during their rematch against the defending champion Toronto Raptors, the Nets held the 12th-best offense in the NBA to only 91 points on 98 possessions. And of course, not to be excluded, a dominant 20-point home beatdown against rival Philadelphia on December 15, in a game where Spencer Dinwiddie could not be stopped on his way to a team-high 24 points.

Brooklyn now finds themselves in a tight bind, however, with their collective playoff lifelines practically on life support. Opt-outs and de-commitments to play now leave a prospective playoff roster decimated and unrecognizable, making the Nets a bubble team that could be on its way out early in Orlando.

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Nets Roster For Season’s Resumption: The Orlando Nets won’t look a thing like the Brooklyn Nets.

Not having Kyrie Irving on the court since February 1 has done more harm than good for the offensive output of these Nets. Without their stars on the floor, The Nets are the only team in the NBA that ranks in the bottom six in field-goal percentage (44.4%, 26th), 3-point percentage (34.0%, 26th), and free-throw percentage (74.4%, 25th). Which, in the given landscape of the bottom of the East, isn’t helpful or satisfactory in the slightest. And it makes it all the worst when you factor how many of the Nets have confirmed that they’d refuse to take the trip to Orlando before the season restarts. To fill you in on how many Nets aren’t going to suit up in the coming weeks, here’s a list of the guys not competing in the abridged season.

• Kyrie Irving (shoulder injury)
• Kevin Durant (Achilles recovery)
• Spencer Dinwiddie (two positive COVID-19 tests)
• Taurean Prince (positive test for COVID-19)
• DeAndre Jordan (positive COVID-19 test)
• Nico Claxton (injury)
• Wilson Chandler (willful opt-out)

That’s a majority of their roster depleted, and the remaining names left on the team don’t quite spell “competitive”. Without their best player in Dinwiddie, who when he was playing, helped the Nets score 11.5 more points per 100 possessions with him on the floor (110.5) than they have with him off of it (99.0). That’s tied for the fifth-biggest on-off differential among 218 players who have played at least 1,000 minutes. He’s been the biggest star on this Nets team while Irving and Durant have rehabilitated, averaging a team-high 20.6 points, 6.8 assists, and 3.5 rebounds per game.

The Netw will lose other dimensions of their offense with other guys like sharpshooting wing Taurean Prince (12.1 PPG., 6 RPG.) and defensive anchor Wilson Chandler (5.9 PPG., 4.1 rpg., 0.5 BPG, 0.3 SPG.), but they hope to get the same kind of supplementary productivity from their recently-signed free-agents in guard Tyler Johnson, wing Justin Anderson and newly-acquired veteran big man Amir Johnson.

Nets interim head coach Jacque Vaughn will now look to rising star Caris LeVert to carry the offensive load and push this car wreck of a Nets team over the seasonal finish line. LeVert was on a tear before the season was suspended, averaging 24.1 points per contest in the season’s last 16 games. In addition to that wild OT win in the TD Garden on March 7, LeVert nabbed his first career triple-double against the Spurs just three nights later. At times, LeVert’s potential shines as bright as an LED Flashlight, as he showcases his ability to score at all three levels. But his consistency has been the biggest question mark.

In his return to the hardwood after a two-month recovery from a thumb ailment, LeVert struggled mightily, and his true shooting percentage dipped. That can’t happen in Orlando if he’s to be the primary threat on the offensive side of the ball.

So now, Brooklyn is going to conjoin new pieces like 2nd-year big man Jarrett Allen, marksman Joe Harris, rotational forwards Rodions Kurucs and Dzanan Musa, and two-way player Chris Chiozza with Tyler Johnson, Justin Anderson, and Amir Johnson in the efforts of making a new starting five that Vaughn himself doesn’t even know what will look like.

“I still have to wait and see how guys are looking once we get to Orlando and make that adjustment, and that’s the challenge,” Vaughn said in an interview with the New York Post. “Whether it’s adjusting the way we play offensively and defensively, that could happen in two weeks leading up to our first game. That’s not your normal preparation, but we might bend a little bit. But we’re not going to break.”

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Brooklyn’s Schedule, At A Glance

Brooklyn might as well be counting their days if they’re going to pack it in and hope that they can keep their seventh seed in the East without any difficulty, considering just how many skill position players won’t even suit up for the Nets in Orlando.

And Speaking of Orlando, those pesky Magic who only sit a full two games out of swiping the seventh seed in the postseason from under them at 30-35. The Washington Wizards (24-40), on the other hand, are sitting six games back from taking that eighth seed from the Nets in the event they slip out of the playoff race or if the Wizards get within four games of the Nets and force a play-in tournament for the eighth seed.

Brooklyn’s schedule looks as if it could be a major thorn in their sides come the time of the season’s resumption. Here’s what it looks like:

The Nets start off their eight-game Orlando campaign with back-to-back duels with their two Eastern foes they are trying to defend their seventh seed from in games against Orlando and Washington and right after that, they’ll go toe-to-toe with two top-three teams in the East in Milwaukee and Boston.

Brooklyn has yet to beat Milwaukee this season (0-3), but do have somewhat of a considerable advantage over the Boston Celtics (2-1). But of course, that was when everyone was healthy and the combination of Spencer Dinwiddie and Caris LeVertsuited up for them in all of their matchups.

Two days after that, Brooklyn has a mini “Western road trip” if you will, and will play another team vying for a playoff spot in the Sacramento Kings next, who need all of their games in positive results if they’re to challenge the eighth-seeded Memphis Grizzlies in the West. After that, they play their hardest game of the eight-game stretch as they play Kawhi Leonard and Paul George’s Los Angeles Clippers. They’ll have one more opportunity to beat the Magic after that game, and will finish their regular season playing another Western team with a battle against Damian Lillard’s now healthy Portland Trail Blazers.

Brooklyn’s roster, already maligned with opt-outs and injuries, has the 17th-hardest schedule of any team in the NBA bubble. Which should be a point of optimism. But, this roster will be hard to identify come tip-off on July 31 against Orlando.

However, if Caris LeVert, Chris Chiozza, and whoever else that’s left on this Nets team can muster up some last-minute chemistry with new guys in the locker room and fight to get Brooklyn back into the postseason, that’ll make two successful seasons in a row that the Nets will have touched the playoffs, which only spells good juju for a team that’s going to be a lot more threatening come December when a new season starts and Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant open up Brooklyn’s championship window for a couple of years.