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No. 12: Brooklyn Nets
Last Season: 38-44
8th place in East; Lost 4-2 to Atlanta in Round 1
Before moving to Brooklyn for the 2012-13 season, the Nets tried to spend their way into contention in the Eastern Conference by trading for veteran guard Joe Johnson to go along with fellow All-Star Deron Williams in the backcourt. The following summer, Brooklyn doubled down by adding future Hall of Famers Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce.
Three years later, the Nets' experiment is at its conclusion. The decision to buy out the final two years of Williams' contract left only Johnson in Brooklyn, and his deal is up at season's end. For their $120 million-plus in luxury tax in that span, not counting the salaries themselves, all the Nets have to show is a single playoff series win. The worst may be yet to come for Brooklyn, which owes future draft picks outright or via swap rights each of the next three years.
Having lost Pierce and head coach Jason Kidd from the 2013-14 team that defeated Toronto in the opening round of the playoffs before losing to the Miami Heat, the Nets struggled in the first half of last season. At the All-Star break, Brooklyn was 10 games below .500. Fortunately, a dismal East meant the Nets were still just a game out of the playoff picture.
At the trade deadline, Brooklyn GM Billy King swapped Garnett to the Minnesota Timberwolves for more versatile power forward Thaddeus Young, a move that also saved the Nets about $7.5 million. Young proved an ideal frontcourt partner for center Brook Lopez, who averaged 22.2 points and 10.4 rebounds per 36 minutes after the trade.
Behind Lopez's production in the paint, Brooklyn had a top-10 offense after the All-Star break. The Nets went 17-13 to claim the eighth and final playoff spot in the East, setting up a first-round matchup with the Atlanta Hawks. Brooklyn was competitive in splitting the first four games of the series, and had actually outscored the Hawks to that point. But Atlanta recovered to take Game 5 at home and eliminated the Nets with a 24-point win in Brooklyn in Game 6.
A busy offseason reshaped the Nets roster, which could feature as many as eight new players, depending on who makes the team out of training camp. Brooklyn quickly re-signed its starting frontcourt early in free agency, with Lopez getting a three-year deal worth nearly $64 million and Young returning for $50 million over four years.
Knowing that Lopez would return, the Nets dealt backup center Mason Plumlee to the Portland Trail Blazers on draft night, getting the rights to Arizona forward Rondae Hollis-Jefferson after the Blazers drafted him 23rd overall.
After bringing back Lopez and Young, Brooklyn spent the rest of free agency scouring for bargains. The Nets signed former first-round picks Shane Larkin and Thomas Robinson to modest one-year deals with a player option for a second season, and also added cheap veterans Andrea Bargnani and Wayne Ellington on similar contracts.
The frugal shopping gave Brooklyn the opportunity to avoid paying the luxury tax by agreeing to a buyout with Williams. He gave up $16 million of the $43.4 million he was owed over the next two seasons, and the Nets spread the remaining salary out through 2019-20 using the stretch provision of the CBA. That puts Brooklyn barely under the tax line, which not only saves money this season (somewhere in the neighborhood of $37.5 million in taxes) but could help the Nets avoid the repeater tax in future years.
The Brooklyn Nets, unhappy with Williams' poor attitude and declining production, paid him $27.5 million to go away. The thing is, the Nets performed much better with Williams on the court than his successor, Jarrett Jack. Ultimately, Brooklyn is betting on team chemistry being more important than analytics. Nets coach Lionel Hollins believes Jack can handle the starting point guard role.
"Why can't he?" Hollins said. "He's done it last year, he's done it in Portland, he's done it in Golden State -- wherever he's been, he's had moments where he's had to start. And I think if a player is not starting [all the time], he gets a bad rap that he can't be a starter. Well, that's not the case. He's been on teams with a lot of good starting point guards, and he's done a great job of adding that depth that they have at point guard. ... [Jack is] in great shape. I'm excited, he's excited and going forward decisions are made, moves are made and me as a coach, I go out and try to do the best I can with what we have." -- Mike Mazzeo
Projected Real Plus-Minus for starters
Jarrett Jack, PG: -3.9
Joe Johnson, SG: 0.9
Bojan Bogdanovic, SF: -4.6
Thaddeus Young, PF: 0.4
Brook Lopez, C: 0.2
Scouting reports on every player on the Nets
Using shot data from 2014-15 and projected starters, Grantland's Kirk Goldsberry ranks each team's offensive efficiency based on square footage.
You better protect the paint against ... Thaddeus Young? The tweener took almost half his shots last season from inside five feet, and hit 58.9 percent, seventh-highest among forwards who attempted at least six shots per game from there.
Joe Johnson (35.9 percent from three last season) and Bojan Bogdanovic (35.5) are the Nets' two main spacers, but defenders can sag on the left wing, where they combine to hit on just 31.5 percent.
All About The Space: 13th (430 square feet of above-average offense)
To identify players who stretch offenses the most, ESPN Stats & Information created the Kyle Korver Effect -- a metric on a 1-100 scale, factoring in 3PT%, 3-point attempt rate (percentage of total shots that come from 3-point range) and influence on teammate FG%.
Korver Effect: Joe Johnson (81.5), a career 37.1 percent shooter from three, projects to hit 34.4 this season. Thankfully, his salary matches his declining production. (That's a joke.)
From a financial standpoint, buying out Williams was a no-brainer. From a basketball perspective, however, the loss of Williams could be costly. Though Brooklyn is banking on better locker-room chemistry without the moody Williams, the Nets are left with one of the league's weakest point guard rotations. Brooklyn was outscored by 6.8 points per 100 possessions with likely starter Jack at point guard last season, per NBA.com/Stats.
The Nets' 17-13 finish to 2014-15 overstated how good they truly were down the stretch. Brooklyn was outscored after the All-Star break, going 6-2 in games decided by five points or fewer. As effective as the Lopez-Young combination was offensively, it's not imposing defensively, and the Nets ranked 23rd in defensive rating after the trade.
Add in the dubious track record of Brooklyn's newcomers -- of the veterans likely to make the roster, only Ellington projects better than replacement level by ESPN's real plus-minus -- and the Nets look a lot like a lottery team that would have to watch the Boston Celtics reap the benefit of the ensuing top-10 pick thanks to the Garnett/Pierce trade.
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