Year 1 of the Kevin Durant-Kyrie Irving era for the Brooklyn Nets will apparently end with both players on the sideline after Thursday's news that Irving will undergo season-ending surgery on his right shoulder. So what, if anything, have we learned about the Nets' chances of contending next season with Durant and Irving back in the lineup?
Between now and then, Brooklyn will still be favored to make the playoffs without Irving. Can the Nets find enough scoring to stay competitive without both of their All-Stars? Let's take a look at the effect of Irving's injury and what kind of roster he might rejoin in the fall.
Can Brooklyn find enough offense without Irving?
When Irving has been out of the lineup this season, the Nets have certainly missed him on offense. The Nets have posted a 103.5 offensive rating in those 33 games, which would put them 26th in the league, a hair ahead of the lottery-bound Charlotte Hornets and Chicago Bulls. By comparison, in games Irving played, Brooklyn managed a 106.7 offensive rating, which would rank 20th.
And yet the Nets are slightly better than .500 without Irving (17-16) and went just 8-12 in the 20 games he played. Naturally, the explanation is at the defensive end of the court. Brooklyn is allowing 103.7 points per 100 possessions in games Irving has missed, down from 108.7 with him -- the difference between the NBA's 18th defense and one ranked third in the league over the course of the season.
Maintaining that kind of defense will probably prove difficult for the Nets, who have benefited from poor shotmaking by opponents in Irving's absence. According to Second Spectrum tracking, their defensive quantified shot quality (qSQ) -- which measures the expected effective field-goal percentage (eFG%) based on the location and type of shot and distance of nearby defenders -- has dropped slightly without Irving on the court, from 51.0% to 50.1%. But their actual opponent eFG% has dropped nearly five times as much, from 54.1% to 49.1%.
In other words, Brooklyn has probably been very unlucky in terms of opponent shooting with Irving in the lineup and a little lucky without him -- something likely to even out. As a result, the Nets will need to find more offense, particularly when replacement point guard Spencer Dinwiddie is on the bench. Units with neither Dinwiddie nor Irving have ranked in the bottom 1 percentile of all NBA lineups this season offensively, per Cleaning the Glass.
A healthy Caris LeVert could help provide more scoring punch. Due to thumb surgery, LeVert has played just 10 of the 33 games Irving has missed. Still, LeVert isn't a point guard, and Brooklyn needs second-year guard Theo Pinson to grow into that role.
The good news for the Nets is nobody in the East is really closing hard for a playoff spot. Brooklyn is still three games up in the loss column (two overall) on the 8-seed Orlando Magic and has a five-game cushion over the ninth-place Washington Wizards. FiveThirtyEight's projections peg Washington for 31 wins on average, and that outcome would allow the Nets to go 7-16 the rest of the season and still make the playoffs. Barring something unforeseen, however, Brooklyn's playoff run will likely be short. And that means attention will turn to whether the Nets can legitimately contend in 2020-21 with Durant and Irving returning from surgery.
Brooklyn roster likely to look similar next fall
A month ago, Irving made a public plea for more help after a loss to the Philadelphia 76ers, telling reporters, "Collectively, I feel like we have great pieces, but it's pretty glaring we need one more piece or two more pieces that will complement myself, [Durant], [DeAndre Jordan], [Garrett Temple], Spence, Caris, and we'll see how that evolves."
That sounds good, but upgrading the roster could prove tricky for the Nets, who are likely to start the summer in the luxury tax and will send their first-round draft pick to Minnesota (via Atlanta) if they make the playoffs. Though LeVert and Taurean Prince agreed to rookie extensions before the season, Brooklyn also has a key free agent in wing Joe Harris, who will likely command a raise from this year's $7.7 million salary -- potentially pushing the Nets deeper into the tax.
While Brooklyn should be able to add a contributor using the taxpayer midlevel exception if ownership is willing to pay the cost -- a smaller exception yielded Temple, who has started 31 games this season -- a trade is the Nets' best hope for adding a real difference-maker. The midtier extensions for both LeVert (starting at $16.2 million) and Prince ($12.25 million) will make both players tradeable, either individually or together, as enough salary to bring back a highly paid starter.
From that standpoint, the biggest long-term disappointment of Irving's injury is not getting a better look at how he fits with LeVert, the team's most coveted young talent. Because of their injuries, the two ball-dominant players saw just 284 minutes together. The results weren't great.
LeVert averaged 15.5 points per 36 minutes with Irving, per NBA Advanced Stats data, compared to 22.9 points so far with Irving on the bench. Despite a lower usage rate, LeVert's true shooting percentage actually dropped slightly (from 49.4% to 48.4%) playing with Irving, and the Nets were outscored by 10.7 points per 100 possessions in the limited sample with them together.
We also have yet to see how anyone on the roster fits with Durant, who most recently took the court in Game 5 of the 2019 NBA Finals, when he ruptured his right Achilles tendon. As a result, my expectation is Brooklyn will make only small tweaks to the roster this summer -- perhaps pursuing a more experienced third point guard to offer insurance in case of Irving injuries -- in order to get a better look at the pieces before considering a bigger move by the 2021 trade deadline.
How well Durant comes back from his Achilles injury is a legitimate concern for the 2020-21 Nets. The condition of Irving's shoulder shouldn't be as worrisome. My research has found little impact in terms of shooting for players who undergo shoulder surgery, a group that notably added Paul George of the LA Clippers last summer. (George underwent procedures on both shoulders after playing through pain.) Since returning in mid-November, George has shot 39% on 3s and a career-high 90% from the foul line. The earlier timetable of Irving's surgery seems likely to have him back on the court in time for training camp ahead of a more promising season for the Nets.