There are rational human beings among us who think that the newly minted Brooklyn Nets have become the NBA's best team, even better than the two-time champion Miami Heat. "Minted" is apropos, because cost will always be a key part of the story for a team whose roster is going to cost its uber-rich owner about $180 million next season.
Excitement over the new Nets is bordering on giddiness, with Thursday's news conference introducing Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, Jason Terry and Andrei Kirilenko, though there is no need for that quartet to speak a word -- the Nets' offseason plan has had all of the subtlety of a sledgehammer. So where does this team stand? The road from today to a Nets championship parade is long, but the time to get there is growing short.
I understand why fans are excited. Heck, my spreadsheets are excited. Through Wednesday's transactions, I've got the Nets forecast for 56 wins and the top seed in the East. Yes, that puts them ahead of the Miami Heat. My formula for determining playoff odds, which considers shortened rotations and gives a heavy dose of extra credit to the top three players on each team, still has Miami as the prohibitive favorite to repeat as champion, winning the title in 26 percent of my most recent run of simulations.
Still, the Nets won 9 percent of the sims, which is much better than it sounds. Only the Los Angeles Clippers and the Oklahoma City Thunder joined Miami in the small group ahead of Brooklyn. Despite my misgivings about this latest super team, on paper the Nets are clearly in the championship conversation.
Stepping away from the numbers, there are lots of basketball reasons to think this will work, as well. Pierce and Joe Johnson can spread the floor, but can also go down to the block against teams without multiple long wing defenders. Garnett and Brook Lopez can both work the pick-and-pop and pick-and-roll with Deron Williams in what you'd think would be the focal point of the new Nets offense. Both can post up, though Garnett doesn't do it that often anymore.
Kirilenko can come off the bench and guard just about anybody, while Terry can offer instant offense on the second unit. I like Shaun Livingston as a player, but I doubt his fit as Williams' primary backup at the point -- Livingston has been mostly a midrange jump-shooter from the wing in recent seasons, his days as a point guard destroyed by his early-career knee injury. Andray Blatche and Reggie Evans comprise an excellent backup combo at the big positions, offering a bit of everything but especially rebounding.
Indeed, on paper, it looks awfully pretty. Nevertheless, I'm not yet buying into the Nets, at least not as usurpers of the Heat's throne. Why? They've got a ton of factors stacked against them. Let's start with some history.
History of super teams
I've been a fan of the NBA for a long time and consider myself a student of the league's history. And we've seen time and again that "super teams" fall short of expectations. To put some numbers to this theory, I decided to flag such teams in my database, which goes back to the 1979-80 season.
I used two criteria to determine which players could help build a super team: He played in multiple All-Star games during his career, and in the season in question played at least 1,000 minutes. This weeds out players with a fluke All-Star appearance, or those once-proud veterans who sat on the bench of a contender as insurance policies.
A team was flagged as "super" if it featured at least five of these performers. Technically speaking, the Nets don't fit because Lopez has been selected to only one All-Star team, but I suspect that will change this season. There were 26 teams that fit the definition. Two of those missed the playoffs altogether. Eight lost in the first round. So right there, that's a 10-for-26 flop rate, and I guarantee that fans of every one of those teams were jazzed entering the season. Six other teams failed to reach the Finals.
So that leaves 10 of 26 that won a conference title. Five of those teams won a championship. It's not easy to win a title, so I'd consider the 5-for-26 odds encouraging if I were a Nets fan. But there are caveats.
1. Two of the title teams are the back-to-back champion Detroit Pistons in 1988-89 and 1989-90. That group had been together several years, and remained together for a few years afterward. Seven of the 26 teams on the list were Detroit teams of that vintage, including the 1993 team that missed the playoffs, leading to the breakup of the roster.
2. The 1986 Boston Celtics don't count. The core group had been together for years, then Boston added former MVP Bill Walton to the mix as a sixth man.
3. Another last-piece group was the 1983 Philadelphia 76ers, who had been knocking at the door for six years before signing Moses Malone as a free agent.
4. The final team was the 2006 Miami Heat, one of the odder title teams of the past few decades, but also probably the best hope for Brooklynites reading the tea leaves. The Heat had an inside-outside focus with Dwyane Wade and Shaquille O'Neal, plus an over-the-hill veteran in Gary Payton, who at the time was happy to complement. However, one of the five super players was Alonzo Mourning, who was relegated to sub status because of his kidney problems. That Miami team did not feature a "super" starting five.
So only five of the 26 super teams since 1980 have won titles, and none of them fit the profile of these Nets. But they all looked good on paper, too.
Distribution of possessions
I've written this before, but when you add up the projected usage rates of the five All-Star starters, you get 128 percent. In theory, reducing their workload should increase their efficiency. However, using last season's Los Angeles Lakers as a cautionary tale, when you put alpha-personality players in beta-personality roles, there can be a lot lost in translation.
Jason Kidd
To maximize the on-paper potential of the Nets, it's going to take a masterful coaching job. And the Nets have given the job to a guy who was an active player as of six weeks ago. Kidd might be the next John Wooden for all we know, but there are so many qualified coaches out there who have put in the time to become, you know, qualified, that the hiring of Kidd was borderline offensive given the on-paper potential of this team.
Age
Forget super teams for a moment. I've got the Nets' team age, weighted by projected minutes, at 31.7 years old, the highest figure in the league. As I've written before, that means the future is now, because the team is going to be as good as it's ever going to be in 2013-14. Too much age often means too many injuries, which is another concern.
Beyond that, teams this old just don't win championships. Only one team in the past 34 years has won the title with a team age higher than what Brooklyn's figures to be. That was the 1998 Chicago Bulls, who won their sixth championship, then disappeared into history. Also -- and this stunned me -- just seven of 924 teams during the 3-point era have had a higher team age than Brooklyn's projection. Beside the Bulls, none of the other six escaped the second round.
These are the pitfalls of so-called super teams and why they almost invariably end up less than the sum of their parts. Can the Nets be the exception? Maybe, and it doesn't hurt that Pierce and Garnett already have championship pedigrees. But if the Nets fall short of your expectations, don't go scratching your head. That's how these stories usually end.