Most basketball fans already know the story, in 2013 the Brooklyn Nets traded five players and three first round draft picks, plus the right to swap first round picks in 2017, for Celtics veterans Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Jason Terry. Mikhail Prokhorov, owner of the Brooklyn Nets and relative newcomer to the NBA scene, was looking to make a splash and push deeper into the Playoffs, maybe even enter into the realm of contention. It was never to be. The Nets roster on paper had all the appearance of a legit squad, but sporting fiends age and injury soon lurched into play. Brooklyn was beleaguered back to reality as the second and subsequent first round of the Playoffs were all to be experienced during Pierce and Garnett’s tenure in Kings County. The trade was a bitter pill for Celtics fans as well, losing two legendary players, who had at long last brought a banner back to Boston, at the time of the trade could not be recognized as anything other than a dismal announcement.
But that’s the past. Looking back with the eagle like vision of hindsight, there is zero debate as to which franchise got the better of the deal, The Nets are now a clear lottery team and the Celtics are a young team on the rise with an excellent coach. These are the details, we all know them. The question is, has there even been a sports franchise with more of a bleak horizon than the current Brooklyn Nets?
I’m unsure the optical device required to properly perceive the Nets plight. Is there a microscope or some futuristic night vision goggle that can locate and observe futility? For clarity purposes, lets bullet point some of the line items of particular importance in regards to the near Shakespearian tragedy that is the Nets.
1. The Nets are a really bad team: Sure, Brooklyn just came off a home win against the villainous Celtics, but a change in trajectory that does not make. The Nets are a bottom three team in the NBA with the Lakers and the scattered shards of basketball souls making up the 76ers. The silver lining of the woeful season Brooklyn is about to undergo, is typically the high quality draft pick at the end of the season. As we’ve discussed, that’s not coming… Not for a long time.
2. The Nets wont have their first round draft pick until 2019: Boston, a likely Playoff team, will undoubtedly exercise the right to swap picks next year, meaning the Nets will be selecting later in the first round than their record reflects. It will be four years before the Nets will be capable of drafting a player indicative of their quality of play, which with no young, incoming talent, should be quite poor.
3. The Nets are currently over the salary limit: At least this debacle is costing them quite a bit of money! With the rising cap coming, Brooklyn should have some money to spend. Bad news, so does everyone else and a team with no hope of winning doesn’t usually draw free agency interest.
4. The Cetlcis are a division rival with the luxury of making the Playoffs while someone else does the tanking for them: <– That.
Analogies, I love analogies, there is no better way to assess and relate to a scenario than to equate it to another. With this appreciation in hand, I quested to find the perfect comparison for the Nets dire fate. When the Nets hand over their likely lottery draft pick to Boston this year, its as if you’re building a house (A Mansion if it ends up being Ben Simmons), then after all your hard work, questioning of self and acceptance of defeat, some guy you hate is gonna move in and live there. There will be no gratitude, no graciousness, any semblance of a thank you will be in jest, at your expense. When its finally over and you gear up to start building again, you get to build an equally large extension on the house for that same guy. Then you do it again.
With an itchy trigger finger and a lust for winning, the Brooklyn Nets did what so many talk radio fans of any sport have warned against for decades; they mortgaged their future for a shortened window at success. The Nets didn’t strike out when they swung for the fences, they came to the plate with no bat and a took a 90 mph fastball to the nuts. But we can’t just kick ’em while there down… For four years. We need to offer a solution. Sadly, there is no positive result from this basketball ice age in New York City’s largest borough, the only option, barring a superstar free agent’s questionable interest in the franchsie, is to get even worse. The Nets must go the Hinkie route, a horrible, sloppily paved roadway littered with the corpses of a forgotten fanbase, saddled upon a barren, desolate landscape. Brooklyn must shed off any player capable of returning a first round pick, they can not go four years asking their fans to play the waiting game in a new market and arena. Brooke Lopez could do it, Thad Young might, but there is a further downside (This is when the creepy fortune teller alerts you to the perils of your newfound powers), to do so only makes the Celtics stronger. Boston wants nothing more than for the Nets to be bad, but the reality is Brooklyn is already going to have to suck it up for the next four years, they might as well suck a little more.
