The Brooklyn Nets have exceeded even the most negative predictions, falling short of preseason expectations on every front. The most recent nail in the coffin was coach Jacque Vaughn’s firing; the team’s final game under Vaughn will be a 50-point thrashing at the hands of the Boston Celtics.
Gio Rivera of NESN doesn’t believe Vaugn’s firing will miraculously turn around the Nets’ terrible performance.Vaughn’s departure won’t stop Brooklyn’s downhill spiral, but it does mark the beginning of several adjustments that will be necessary to get the team out of its hole, which is growing deeper every day,” stated Rivera.
The Boston Celtics won’t soon need to worry about the Nets.It’s amazing how the Celtics are almost always involved and how the Nets consistently misjudge their doomsday scenarios. In order to team Deron Williams and Joe Johnson with Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett, Brooklyn threw all of its cards on the table in 2013. They did this by sending Boston unprotected first-round selections, which resulted in the selection of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, two key players for the team. In order to make Kyrie Irving, a former Celtics player, the face of the Nets in 2019, they paired him with James Harden and Kevin Durant to create their own version of “the big three.” The trio struggled to stay drama-free and healthy, playing just 16 games together.GM Sean Marks found himself in a dire circumstance, even though he shared some of the blame. In order to quickly rebuild the roster, he concentrated on obtaining value wherever he could. Some of that, like trading Kevin Durant for Mikal Bridges and Cam Johnson, went surprisingly well, and the cherry on top was a pile of selections. Some of that, like the panic trade of James Harden for Ben Simmons, the human soap opera, was so clumsy that it might have been considered malpractice.Mikal Bridges is the player the front office wants to build around, but he is too stiff and unpolished offensively to be a consistent number-one option on a team with any real aspirations; Cam Thomas has no trouble creating his own shot and putting the ball in the basket, but he struggles in every other area of the game; Nic Claxton and Cam Johnson are excellent complementary players, but they aren’t doing anything special without an established foundation around them.Brooklyn needs to make certain changes, but they need to be more significant and less peripheral. Eliminating Ben Simmons and Dorian Finney-Smith from the roster would be a great place to start. With their cap space and war chest of selections now open, you could focus on high-end free agents and trade targets.
Though they still have hope, the Nets need to dominate the off-season. They’ve given themselves four months to get everything in order, including trying out players and new frontman Kevin Ollie to determine who fits in with their plans. Certainly, one of their goals is to learn how to compete with the Boston Celtics.
