Season-In-Review: Marshon Brooks

Marshon certainly hads swagger that goes through the roof, but will his potential and on-court performance do the same this season?

This post, along with the other posts I will do in the Season-In-Review series, will take a deeper look at how all the Nets did last season on the court and possibly off of it. We continue with Marshon Brooks. I covered Gerald Green last.

Ah, Marshon Brooks, the most swagged-out Net remaining on the squad, holding the sole title since DeShawn Stevenson was traded to the Hawks. The 25th overall pick in the 2011 Draft, acquired by the Nets during the draft from Boston for the 27th overall pick (JaJuan Johnson) and a future 2nd-rounder, turned out to be one of the few bright spots for the team last season and showed an inane ability to score the ball. Whether that be from beyond the 3-point arc, via the mid-range jumper, or even an acrobatic scoop-to-the-hoop down low, it didn’t matter. The simple truth is that Marshon can score points in the NBA, a talent that he certainly showed during his college years at Providence, most notably in a 52-point performance against Notre Dame.

Ok, I may be fawning a little too much over a guy that doesn’t play a whole bunch of defense and might have the worst shot selection in the NBA after Johan Petro of course. However, I don’t care because the most important aspect of Brooks’ rookie year wasn’t that he scored 12 points per or showed he can make shots from anywhere on the court, it was that, as a rookie, he had the confidence heading into his inaugural season in the NBA that he could score from anywhere on the floor.

In basketball, confidence is ridiculously important in order for a player to realize their true potential. If a 6-8, 250-pound tank of a power forward has no confidence in his ability to make a free throw, then they’re is a very little chance that he will drive to the paint a lot, greatly decreasing his value as a big-man with no regard to his solid build or even out-of-this-world athletic talents. Without confidence, a NBA player is only as good as his limitations allow him to be, not as good as his true skills or athleticism would suggest.

Let’s get back to Marshon, a player with certain faults–don’t get me wrong–it’s just that none of them is a lack of confidence, a great trait for a NBA sophomore like him to possess. Sure, he may miss a lot of the ridiculous shots he hoists up, but as a rookie entering the NBA after being the only consistent scoring option in college, it might take a little time to adjust to being a non-selfish member of a team.

Another troubling aspect of Marshon’s rookie season was his low 3.6 boards per game. In college, playing in the highly-talented Big East, Brooks grabbed exactly 7 rebounds a contest so a drop-off of nearly 50% from his senior year at Providence to his rookie NBA season is somewhat alarming. With his tall 6-5 frame as a shooting guard and with the athleticism he possesses, Marshon simply should be able to rebound better for a Nets team that was 26th in the NBA last year in that category. He has got to do a better job on the glass in his sophomore campaign for the Nets to limit second-chance possessions for their opponents and even snag more chances at the offensive end for themselves.

All in all, for being the late 1st-round pick that he was, Marshon did a spectacular job for the offensively-challenged Nets in his rookie season, a certainly hard feat to accomplish. I, along with the coaching staff of the Nets and the team’s fans in general, are all pumped to see what else Marshon can bring in 2012-13 and are super-excited to see if he can develop into the well-rounded player that he can be sooner or later.