There are a lot of potential pitfalls for so-called superteams, but this is one even the scrooges among us couldn't have foreseen: The Brooklyn Nets announced via a team news release on Saturday that center Brook Lopez has suffered a fractured fifth metatarsal of the right foot. The team's official statement didn't initially declare Lopez out for the season, but that's the scuttlebutt around the league.
The news is a devastating blow for the Nets, who were showing some signs lately, as Marv Albert might say. After a 5-14 start, Brooklyn won four of five before its porous defense resurfaced in two bad losses in three days. Still, a 9-17 overall record is enough to keep the Nets in contention in this year's Atlantic Division, which threatens to be the worst we've ever seen.
For reasons well beyond the Nets' tepid intradivision competition, Brooklyn is in no position to write off this season. In terms of team age weighted by minutes, Brooklyn is the league's third-oldest team, and, with 26-year-old Lopez on the shelf, that number is likely to go up. The Nets' offseason strategy was to leverage just about every future asset at their disposal -- cap space, draft picks, etc. -- to make a right-this-very-second push for a championship.
With projected starters Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Joe Johnson all past their primes, Brooklyn's title odds, dwindling as they might be, are as high this season as they're going to get. Because the Nets can't afford to pack it in and wait for next year, general manager Billy King is under the gun to pull off something bold, and he's going to have to do it fast.
During Brooklyn's modest seven-game offensive upswing, Lopez played in five of the games, averaging 23.2 points on 62 percent shooting. Meanwhile, in the same stretch, point guard Deron Williams averaged 17.8 points and 10.0 assists after recovering from his own injury woes. With so many alpha-players on the roster, Nets coach Jason Kidd needed to establish some kind of clear-cut hierarchy for Brooklyn's attack. All along, the most logical focal points were Williams and Lopez, who have a history of working together and are the two Nets stars still in their primes. Lately, the Nets increasingly relied on the Williams-Lopez dynamic while everyone else played off of them. On the offensive end, it was a dynamic that seemed to be working.
That's over, and, with Garnett showing the wear and tear of an 18-year-veteran, and Andray Blatche below average on the defensive end, the Nets are left with the prospect of rotating that duo with undersized Reggie Evans in the middle and hoping a collection of perimeter-oriented lineups can outscore enough opponents to get Brooklyn into the playoffs. Even if that works, the Nets would figure to fall well short of championship contention. That's what we're looking at if King decides to stand pat.
So, what else can King do? There is one possible avenue that could get the Nets back on track for this season, but, before we spell that out, perhaps Brooklyn fans ought to make sure they're sitting down because they're not going to like this suggestion: Trade Lopez.
The ramifications of Lopez's injury are worrisome for the talented center. This is the same bone in the same foot Lopez injured in the 2011-12 season, and, after last season, he had another surgery related to the injury to correct a bent screw in the foot. Now that another mishap has occurred in the same spot, there is a very real worry that Lopez could join the likes of Bill Walton and Yao Ming as skilled 7-footers whose lower body can't hold up long term to the NBA grind. At 26, you can't write him off, but it's a legitimate concern.
That reality -- and the two years, $32.5 million left on Lopez's contract after this one (one guaranteed season, one player option) -- severely undermines his trade value for most teams across the league. However, if you look over to the opposite coast, you find another organization in the Los Angeles Lakers that is almost as desperate as Brooklyn.
The big difference between the situations of the two franchises is that the Lakers' focus is more on the next two years rather than this one, as those are the campaigns in which L.A. is gambling that Kobe Bryant will be healthy for presumably the last two years of his career. Although the Lakers won't publicly admit to writing off this season, the reality is that Los Angeles is unlikely to earn a playoff spot in the stacked Western Conference. With payroll opening up after the season, the Lakers can't start angling for 2014-15 soon enough.
The Lakers can offer up the expiring contract of Pau Gasol in exchange for Lopez. The exchange makes perfect sense if the Nets truly recognize the urgency of their predicament. Gasol would offer much the same dynamic as Lopez in a two-man tandem with Williams, plus he's a superior defender and a better passer, which arguably makes him a better fit with Brooklyn's aging stars than Lopez. Brooklyn has already mortgaged its future in an effort to win now. Moving Lopez is just one more step in that direction, one that arguably makes it easier to start from scratch when the time comes.
From the Lakers' standpoint, it's almost as big a gamble as the Nets would be making. However, the Lakers have already rolled the dice on the next two years by extending Bryant's contract despite his injury problems. Moving Gasol for an injured player would mean a lot more losses in the short term, which has the benefit of better positioning the Lakers to add a franchise-type talent from the 2014 draft. Then, if Lopez and Bryant get healthy, the Lakers are suddenly looking at an inside-outside core of that duo to go with an immediate impact rookie. The Lakers might not find a better scenario.
If the Lakers aren't willing to roll the dice on Lopez, perhaps they'd be willing to move Gasol for Pierce, an L.A. native. Then you have a pedigreed -- albeit aged -- wing combination for the next two years, and you can pursue an interior complement with the aforementioned draft pick. In either situation, the Nets would have to package another player, such as Tornike Shengelia, to make the deal work under cap restrictions. All of these Lakers-Nets scenarios seem slightly fantastic, but, as we said, these are desperate times in both locales.
Whatever path the Nets choose, the focus has to remain on the present because owner Mikhail Prokhorov isn't shelling out $103 million in payroll plus massive luxury tax penalties so his team could bide its time.