In truth, the Nets never stood a chance.
They hardly knew each other when they were thrust into the fire.
It would be one thing if this were the superstar-laden roster the Sean Marks-led front office had under contract last summer. A second consecutive first-round sweep would be unacceptable given the talent once in town.
This roster, however, didn’t have the luxury of an entire training camp or a full season’s worth of games to build chemistry. And although head coach Jacque Vaughn isn’t one for excuses, there is one explanation for why these Nets failed to secure even one playoff victory this season.
They simply didn’t have the time to jell as a unit.
“I think this can be an elite shooting team with what we have,” starting forward Cam Johnson said. “So defense and shooting I think can be big, big, big identity markers for this core. So it can be pretty cool to see how that might play out.”
Will the ceiling of this team as currently constructed raise beyond a first-round exit, however, if the Nets choose to stand pat in free agency or in the trade market during yet another critical offseason in Brooklyn?
It’s a question the front office has to answer as they turn every stone in an attempt to improve this roster for a deeper playoff run next season. The Nets could bring back a roster with the same core group of players next year.
“I’d be nice to see this group continue to stick it out and be together for as long as they can,” Marks said during Sunday’s end-of-the-season presser. “And hopefully, as [head coach Jacque Vaughn] said, over the summer they take advantage of being around one another, and I think you have that in these individuals. They really feel like they’re close family.”
Doing so, of course, would mean the Nets either struck-out on adding a star, are holding form to keep flexibility for future deals, or are willing to see what this team can do when given a level playing field.
There’s also a wild card: Ben Simmons, who is under contract for two more years worth a combined $77M, but missed the entire second half of the season due to back issues for the second year in a row.
Marks said Simmons, who was ruled out for the season due to a nerve impingement in his lower back, is progressing in his rehab and that “at this point, he does not need surgery.” The Nets hope that remains the case, and that Simmons — a former three-time All-Star — can be “100% by Sept. 1″ and “a full go in training camp.”
The returns for the unit without Simmons, however, are in: The five-man unit of Spencer Dinwiddie, Mikal Bridges, Johnson, Dorian-Finney Smith and Nic Claxton — Vaughn’s starters after the Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving trades — tallied 348 minutes over 24 games this season.
The Nets had a 31-20 record after Irving’s final game in Brooklyn and went 12-13 in games after Bridges and Johnson arrived from Phoenix. The Nets had the fifth-worst winning percentage in games that came down to crunch-time possessions and struggled to generate offense in the half-court — one of the reasons Vaughn decreed they play fast in transition to spray threes to stand a fighting chance in the playoffs against the Sixers.
Many of those crunch-time woes can be chalked to a lack of chemistry, an underrated shortcoming that normally rears its head when the pressure rises.
“A whole new starting lineup and then especially going into a playoff series, teams have been together, they’ve been in the trenches together for five-plus years, and then you throw in a whole new team,” said Claxton, one of the longest-tenured Nets. “I’m not making no excuses, just it would be nice going forward if we could maybe just start to just build something here.”
Bringing the same core group of players without adding a star, however, undoubtedly caps this Nets team’s potential.
The Eastern Conference is stacked with talent, as the Nets know from looking in the rear-view mirror on their ride to the playoffs. The Miami Heat and Atlanta Hawks, for example, are two teams that finished lower in the standings despite having star-to-superstar level players. The Chicago Bulls also missed the playoffs with three former All-Stars (DeMar DeRozan, Zach LaVine and Nikola Vucevic), as did the Toronto Raptors, powered by two former All-Stars Pascal Siakam and Fred VanVleet.
If the Nets choose to hold firm they will be in a dogfight to reclaim their standing as a playoff team next season. They’ll have a clearer picture of what remains in Brooklyn after the dust has settled this summer.
“I think I would have loved to have had an entire year, an entire season of looking at what this group could look like, but at the end of the day, I think there was some, some real bright spots here and in how the coaches and players connected,” Marks said. “We saw players take their games to new heights. We saw players that maybe we didn’t expect to have the type of roles ahead really exceed them.
“These guys have a big offseason in which to continue to jell, continue to grow. So you know, we’ll be spending a lot of time with them. The coaches spend a lot of time with them in the offseason and we’ll be evaluating throughout the whole [time].”
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