The ACL tear Jarrett Jack suffered in the Nets’ 100-97 win over the Celtics on Sunday in Boston was just the latest debilitating injury suffered by a key rotation player. He is out for the rest of the season, so career backups Shane Larkin and Donald Sloan — both picked up on cheap contracts by Brooklyn this summer — will have to hold down the fort at point guard for the foreseeable future.
When combined with the fractured ankle suffered by standout rookie Rondae Hollis-Jefferson about a month ago, the Nets are now without two of their five best players for a month and a half, at least. A major question this season for the Nets was whether or not their limited talent level would be able to lead the team to a mediocre enough record to sneak into the Eastern Conference playoff field. Now, the question have become whether or not the Nets can field a roster with enough healthy NBA players to avoid the league’s cellar.
The Nets bought out former All-Star Deron Williams this summer, knowing full well that when at the top of his game, he was a much better option than anyone else Brooklyn had at the 1, even Jarrett Jack. But, the front office decided that the team was better off without Deron, his negative attitude and prohibitive contract and went with Jack as the starter heading into the season.
Obviously, the 10-24 Nets have managed to underperform their already low expectations, but it wouldn’t be fair to heap a lot of the blame on Jack, who actually was playing pretty well before he got hurt. Now, though, unless they make a surprising trade or pick up a free agent like Tony Wroten or Nate Robinson, the Nets will have to finish the season using the trio of Larkin, Sloan and even Markel Brown as the options at the point.
Is that the most optimal situation? No, probably not, but Brooklyn should be able to make do with those three splitting the minutes in some way.
Larkin, who has posted career-high shooting, scoring and passing numbers so far this year, has managed to play much better than most thought the Knicks castoff would, as he has shown a nice ability to run fastbreaks off turnovers and missed shots. He also can knock down open threes and is an incredible athlete who makes plays on defense, just ask his former team. Sloan has posted decent numbers in his previous stops in Indiana and Cleveland but has been inconsistent in Brooklyn due to intermittent playing time while Brown, who also has insane athletic ability, hasn’t gotten much of a chance this season but has loads of potential.
Larkin, Sloan and Brown are not going to set the world on fire, and will certainly not be intimidating any opponent’s backcourts, but the likelihood that any out-of-organization acquisitions are going to make a more positive impact than any of those three is small. Plus, is it really worth it for the Nets to give up future assets to make this season slightly more bearable? The answer to that obviously no, since this “bridge year” most likely will not be leading to a playoff appearance.
What makes the most sense is for the Nets to use their in-house, current options to gauge what they have at the position going forward. Brown and Larkin are both just 23 — and in their second and third years in the NBA respectively — while Sloan is 27, so all three guys are relatively young who can bring something to the table to Brooklyn going forward. The rest of the season, which won’t mean much unless the Nets stage one of the NBA’s biggest turnarounds ever, could serve as an extended tryout for these guys for the backup point guard spot for next year. That would be much preferable to someone like Wroten.
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