It’s no secret that the Nets have, more or less, been a disappointment in each of their three seasons in Brooklyn, especially in the postseason. After another offseason of roster turnover, ESPN is projecting another bad season for Lionel Hollins’ squad, polling their writers to come to a prediction of just 30 wins for the 2015-16 Nets.
In their Summer Forecast series, the folks at ESPN came together to expect Brooklyn to win eight less games than last season, even though Brook Lopez is fully healthy, Thaddeus Young will spend an entire season in town and Deron Williams will have his diminished skills and awful attitude affected the Mavericks. The only impact guys who left the team this summer were Williams, Mirza Teletovic (who missed much of the season anyway), Alan Anderson and Mason Plumlee, yet, ESPN’s “experts” collectively think the Nets are eight wins worse.
Besides the inherent flaws in using writers’ subjective thoughts to “predict” win totals for a season that is a few months away, it just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to expect the Nets to be so much worse in the 2015-16 campaign than they were in the 2014-15 one.
Possibly the team’s biggest issue last year was Deron’s ineffectiveness and even worse mindset when he was playing and not injured, and now he’s not even on the team. The other major problem was how old and unathletic the Nets were, which has mostly been solved by Billy King’s summer pickups and trades.
So, why would the Nets be “projected” to finish 30-52 this season? To be honest, I have no idea. ESPN says the Nets will finish 12th in the East, behind teams like the Pistons, Hornets, Pacers and Celtics and tied with teams like the Magic. I get how losing Plumlee’s length and size, Anderson’s defensive ability and shooting prowess and Deron’s once-in-a-blue-moon resurgence could lead to uncertainty on how the Nets will fare in their fourth season in Brooklyn. But, I don’t get how that would warrant such a decrease in the team’s overall outlook.
Now, Brooklyn boasts the 10th-youngest team in the NBA and has just two players older than 30 (Joe Johnson and Jarrett Jack), which is four less than it had at the beginning of last season. In the span of just a calendar year, the Nets went from being a team of aging, former All-Stars to a team with a few veterans that is mostly rooted in younger impact players like Brook Lopez and Thaddeus Young. Add in mid-20s guys like Andrea Bargnani, Bojan Bogdanovic and Donald Sloan–to name a few–and you get a balanced roster with the appropriate amount of youth and experience.
Clearly the Nets don’t have the talent to match up with the likes of the Cavaliers and Bulls, per se, but they should be able to compete with teams at the lower end of the Eastern Conference such as the Celtics, Bucks and Pacers. Injuries are always a concern, especially with Brook Lopez, but Brooklyn’s center is healthy for the first offseason in years which has to mean something. If that can translate into him playing 70+ games, then the Nets should be able to blow by their low, 30-win estimate with ease.
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