The Brooklyn Nets have lost three game in a row, their general manager Billy King has put the team’s three highest-paid players on the trading block, and their previous head coach Jason Kidd‘s young, pesky Milwaukee Bucks team currently sits two spots ahead of the Nets in the Eastern Conference playoff picture. To put it in simpler terms, the Brooklyn Nets have entered a tunnel that doesn’t have a light at the end of it.
That may sound a bit hyperbolic, but it’s not. The Nets would be the 8th seed if the playoffs started today, which is the worst position a team can be in the NBA. (Just ask Kidd’s new team from a couple of years ago.) Not only that, the Nets are in NBA purgatory without the assets to get out. To borrow a line from a fellow NBA writer Steve McPherson, “draft picks are like currency,” and the Nets are broke.
How can a team that’s owned by a man worth 18 billion, yes, with a “b”, go belly-up a little over a year removed from being on the cover of Sports Illustrated? Well, the NBA isn’t MLB where bringing in an owner willing to write blank checks to win a championship can happen. Which is what Prokhorov must have figured he could do when he traded for Joe Johnson, Paul Pierce, Deron Williams and Kevin Garnett along with pursuing Dwight Howard and locking up Brook Lopez to a max contract when the former went to Los Angeles. Prokhorov’s time in the NBA thus far, although it may be coming to a close soon, could be described as both bold for today and careless for tomorrow.
If somebody ever writes a book covering Billy King’s general manager stints in the League, the title has to be Billy King: Bold for Today and Careless for Tomorrow. (Could also be one of the next James Bond movie titles, too, but either way I want the royalty checks if it happens.) I imagine when Prokhorov was going through the interview process for his new GM he came across King’s resume and hired him on the spot.
Prokhorov: “So here’s the deal, I’m willing to pay whatever it takes to put together a contender in Brooklyn. Screw draft picks, play around with the ESPN Trade Machine, if fans know them then try and sign them. But most importantly, put these blinders on for the next couple of years, so you don’t get distracted about the future of this team.”
King: “Where do I sign?”
That’s exactly how I imagine their first conversation went. As fun as it to poke fun at King’s incompetence as a general manager in this League, Prokhorov embraced this strategy that bombed in Philadelphia. So who’s worse: the fool or the billionaire who enables the fool? Still, the majority of us gave this Nets team the benefit of doubt because even with all their draft-pick negligence they acquired a lot of ready-to-contribute talent in the weaker conference.
I mentioned before that this drastic win-now strategy was essentially what the Magic Johnson and Friends Ownership Group did after purchasing the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Dodgers kept the baseball-version of Billy King, Ned Colletti, in power and what followed was the same result as the Nets; a guaranteed playoff appearance, but zero Finals or World Series appearances.
Now the Dodgers are taking a new, and terrifying, approach by stealing Andrew Friedman from the Tampa Bay Rays brilliant front office to run a team with an unlimited payroll. We’ve always wondered what it’d be like to see Oakland Athletics’ general manager Billy Beane run a team with top-5 payroll, but Friedman beat him to the punch.
The Nets need to undergo that same sort of transformation within its front office before it makes any serious moves like trading one, or all, of its above-average players. Could you imagine a scenario next summer where Prokhorov throws an egregious amount of money at Daryl Morey to save Brooklyn from 10-plus years of doom and gloom? Or what about Sam Presti in Oklahoma City?
However, one team that is perfectly fine with the current situation in Brooklyn is the Atlanta Hawks for one very important reason: The Hawks can swap draft picks with the Nets one more time next summer. (And with the way the Nets and Hawks look so far this season, I think they’ll be swapping with Brooklyn.)
Still, the Nets are a playoff team if the season ended today, which is a problem. The Hawks are sitting at 14-6, winners of eight-straight games, but are still missing “the guy” to get them over the hump. To get that kind of player, they’d have to bottom out, trade Al Horford, Paul Millsap, Jeff Teague and start from scratch.
Unless the Nets blow it up before next summer.
Billy King is in a major bind. He reportedly wants to move his three-highest paid players, but to do that he wouldn’t get much in return because of just how pricey, and troubling, the trio of Joe Johnson, Brook Lopez and Deron Williams are. Joe is making a little under $400,000 less than Kobe Bryant this season and projects as a 6th man on a contender. Lopez comes with major injury concerns, even though he’s the perfect No.2 option on a contender down low and Deron comes with a lot of baggage and wonky ankles.
You’re not getting All-Stars in return for any of these guys.
So the Hawks can afford to keep their core together at least for the rest of this season because of the possibility that Brooklyn might blow it up and fall into the lottery. That’s the hope, at least. But the Nets currently sit at 8-12, losers of their last three games and just gave another team a second-round draft pick in 2020 just to take Andrei Kirilenko off their hands because of how unhappy he was in Brooklyn.
Things could go from grim to gothic at any moment it seems in Brooklyn and as callus as it may be, it’s something the Hawks must hope for.
