Brook Lopez praises the rebuilding Nets' 'abnormal' offseason
Even when the Brooklyn Nets go normal, they’re far from normal. When they do the right things, make the smart moves, play the personnel game the right way, things aren’t normal. Not just because we’re comparing these Nets to the absolutely ridiculous run that Billy King dragged the team through for season after season (ending earlier in 2016), but because no NBA team has ever had to drag itself out of a death sentence like this.
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This is why Nets center Brook Lopez, the longest-tenured player on the franchise (since 2008) and a 20-points per game scorer last season, still called the team’s offseason “abnormal” upon reflection of new general manager Sean Marks’ first few months on the job. And this is from a guy that’s seen a whole heck of a lot.
Lopez, who is about to play for his ninth coach as he enters his ninth season with the franchise, talked with Fred Kerber of the New York Post:
“I’ve only been in the league eight years, but I’ve seen a lot of different things in that time,” Lopez said. “Crazy stuff.”
[…]
“It’s abnormal,” he said. “It’s a good feeling. I know they’ve been harping on the culture and all but it’s a completely unique feel this time, like we’re moving in that right direction. It’s something people actually want to be a part of.”
If you’re new to this team, understand that the crops have been salted in ways that go far beyond the typical NBA rebuild. This isn’t even the sort of re-do that you’d see from some of the NBA and ABA fly-by-night teams of decades’ past. All of the Nets’ missteps happened in the modern era, which makes the past work of Knight and owner Mikhail Prokhorov all the more embarrassing.
League-high payrolls and scads of discarded draft picks resulted in the Nets losing in the first round in 2013 to a Bulls team working without Derrick Rose, Luol Deng and Kirk Hinrich while working with a badly injured Joakim Noah. The next season they barely made a peep while losing in the second round to the Miami Heat, and in 2015 the squad won 38 games and fell to the Atlanta Hawks in the first round.
The team failed to make the playoffs last season, which resulted in zero draft picks for the Nets, because King and Prokhorov dealt their 2014, 2016 and 2018 first round picks to Boston for the aging trio of Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, and Jason Terry – all three of which are barely hanging on as active players three years later and could have understandably retired one or two years ago. They lost their 2015 pick in a deal for Joe Johnson, and Boston earned the right to swap 2017 first round picks with the Nets next June.
And the Celtics will be far better than the Nets in 2016-17. Things will be swapped.
Sean Marks is trying to do something about that, trying to limit the embarrassment in creating a team that at least competes, as bottoming out for a better draft pick won’t be an option until the 2018-19 (!) season at earliest.
The Nets’ last pick of its own came in 2013, when they chose Mason Plumlee (who was dealt in 2015 for rookie pick Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, who missed most of his first year with a right ankle fracture). In dealing for the above triptych from Boston, Deron Williams (giving up 2010 lottery selection Derrick Favors and eventually Enes Kanter), Joe Johnson, and Gerald Wallace (for the pick that turned into Damian Lillard), the Nets really haven’t had a lasting pick since 2009, when King selected (yikes) Terrence Williams in the lottery.
Good thing they took Brook Lopez the year before.
According to Brook, “the most anti-social” of all the Nets has been instrumental in trying to recruit acquisitions to a situation that is less than ideal:
“I called guys, texted guys, met guys. Isn’t that amazing?”
Lopez and Marks didn’t send the NBA on fire with their work – the team’s biggest dent was forcing Miami and Portland into matching $125 million worth of restricted contract offers to Tyler Johnson and Allan Crabbe – but the inevitable slow start is promising at least.
The team renounced a series of vets who were understandably already sick of being with the team, dealt the much-respected Thaddeus Young (out of place on this rebuilding outfit) for a rookie pick in Caris LeVert, and signed Jeremy Lin to a three-year, $36 million deal to play for a team where he should be able to dominate the ball – a role he’s best suited for. Trevor Booker and stalwart Luis Scola were brought in to fill out the roster, and the team took a chance on resurrecting the career of Anthony Bennett – a former No. 1 overall pick (just three years ago!) that is high on talent but low on confidence.
Wins anywhere from 11 to 41, unless Boston falls off in ways unseen, will hardly matter as the Nets have to swap picks next June, but Marks was well-aware of the challenges heading into his first gig as GM. This is a situation that we just haven’t seen any franchise have to work its way through, dating back to the start of this silly league’s beginnings.
Abnormal, innit?
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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
