Here on Brooklyn Balling, I’ll try to recap the chaos that was the 2013-14 Nets season with a series of “Season Review” posts on the players, trades, and even coach that shaped how this year turned out. Reggie Evans was last, and Marcus Thornton is up next.
Picked up at the trade deadline in February from the Sacramento Kings for Reggie Evans and Jason Terry, Marcus Thornton proved to be a big scorer off the bench for the Nets in the tail-end of the regular season and even in some games of the postseason as well.
Thornton, when on the floor, is there to do one thing: score, and that’s something he did pretty well while with Brooklyn. In just 26 regular season games with the Nets, the LSU product (and Baton Rouge native) scored 12.3 points per contest on 41% field goal shooting and 38% three-point shooting. Those are pretty efficient numbers for a volume shooter like Thornton.
Statistics aside, his addition to the team brought a new presence offensively that just wasn’t there before. Jason Kidd had hoped that Terry would be an effective spot-up shooter and bench scorer, but he clearly didn’t have enough left in the tank to do that. That’s why Billy King felt that a player of his ilk was needed on this Nets team, and that proved to be exactly the case.
Overall, Thornton wasn’t a huge piece of Brooklyn’s first round playoff win over the Toronto Raptors nor its second round loss to the Miami Heat, but he put up solid numbers in a few games. Marcus was held under 10 points in the first six games of the Toronto series, but exploded for 17 (and six rebounds) in Brooklyn’s Game Seven win. He continued this success through the first two games of the Miami series, scoring 11 and 10 respectively.
However, he faded very quickly, playing a total of just six minutes in the series’ last three games and not even entering Game Four at all. In his 124 playoff minutes with the Nets–the only ones of his career–Thornton scored 5.9 points per game, which doesn’t look too good until you extrapolate that he scored roughly 17 points per 36 minutes, which is a solid showing for a reserve.
All in all, the Nets got exactly what they expected to get from Marcus, who, for his entire career, has been a streaky shooter. When he’s feeling it, he can score 25 points without blinking an eye. But when his shot is off, he can go 0-for-10 from the field without being conscious of it. And with roughly $8 million due to his for the 2014-15 season, he’ll be back with the Nets barring a stunning trade. Who knows, maybe he’ll get more playing time.
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