2015-16 NBA Preview: Brooklyn Nets

BROOKLYN NETS

The outlook is bleak. It’s bleak not just because it’s likely they’re going to be one of the worst teams in the league; it’s also bleak because there’s really not much going on. At least rebuilding teams have young players, especially rookies, to look forward to. Your lottery pick can look like a winner right away, and a guy who still can’t legally drink in the US can have a breakout season, and suddenly you’re aiming for a winning season faster than anyone anticipated. That’s not likely with the Nets. They’re still a veteran team without much young talent, and there are too few resources to remodel the roster.

2015 in review:

Thanks to the void in the eastern conference, Brooklyn made the playoffs, but it wasn’t a successful season. Poorly run teams have the habit of lopping off the parts that worked well for them – in Brooklyn’s case, it was a flexible lineup with a smallball four, typically Paul Pierce, with either Kevin Garnett or Mason Plumlee in the middle. Of course, Pierce fled, Lopez got healthy, and they tried lineups with essentially two centers at once, as Garnett at this stage of his career is more of a center. The offense was anemic for much of the season, but there is some hope: after the Garnett trade, Brooklyn was forced to rely on lineups with Lopez next to Thaddeus Young or Bojan Bogdanovic as the power forward. This spaced the floor for Lopez, and he averaged nearly 20 points per game with excellent efficiency after the all-star break. They stole a couple games from the Hawks in the playoffs, but unfortunately they were unable to rein in more talent over the off-season.

Rotation players in: Andrea Bargnani, Rondae Holis-Jefferson, Shane Larkin, Wayne Ellington, Thomas Robinson.

Rotation players out: Deron Williams, Mason Plumlee, Alan Anderson, Mirza Teletovic, Kevin Garnett.

Frankly, the Nets are bringing in nothing of value unless a young guy makes tremendous progress. They’ve lost some useful players too. Even a broken-down Deron Williams is better than their other options, and Mason Plumlee, while not perfect, is a real live NBA-level frontcourt player with electrifying athleticism. Both Anderson and Teletovic would have been useful for their depth.

2016 Projected

My own numbers project the Nets lower than most predictions out there, and it’s for a simple reason: I don’t project any player to be a significantly positive contributor and they’ll be relying on a number of players who are likely large net negatives. That might surprise some people, but Joe Johnson is getting old and he doesn’t offer an NBA team too much of anything anymore besides inexplicable all-star appearances. His usage rate has fallen to an average level, and since historically much of his value has been tied to his scoring this is a concern. He’s still a decent playmaker with isolation and post moves, but it’s not enough to make a big dent in an NBA defense.

If your scoring skills are pretty average, and with his efficiency that’s generous, you need to perform at an elite level in other key areas to drive your team’s offense. Johnson doesn’t offer great screens or Korver-esque spacing or otherworldly offensive rebounding and foul drawing – he’s a good passer, but he’s lacking wizardry there and he wasn’t even a heavy primary option for what turned out to be a mediocre offense. His defense is still pretty good but I shouldn’t have to convince anyone that the aging wing isn’t a game-changer there. Add it all up, and hopefully he projects as an above average player but nothing special – yet he’ll be making nearly 25 million dollars.

Brook Lopez is no help either, despite his scoring. He needs to be set up, he’s a poor passer, and his slow flat-footed jumper inspires no fear on the perimeter. There is no perfect way to figure out which players are the primary driving forces of healthy offenses, but Lopez has only one component, scoring that’s sometimes fairly efficient, and that alone, surprisingly, isn’t enough at the rate he produces. One may form an elegant argument about the virtues of post scoring and how putting pressure on the defense with a large scorer who can hit a free throw opens up the floor, but there’s simply very little evidence Lopez has a star-level impact on that end of the court. He’s a good scorer, but basketball is more complicated than that and it boils down to network optimization. Basically, Lopez doesn’t make it easier for his teammates to score, and he’s a dependent vulture scorer who relies on the spacing and passing of his teammates to get in the right positions to score. His pick-and-roll game is underrated, and his touch is fantastic, but he can’t lift an offense.

Defensively, Lopez is a bit better than advertised but his reputation is awful. For the positives, he’s a truly huge player with a 9’ 5” standing reach, which is past the 90^th percentile and makes him one of the giants of the league. He’s had a healthy block rate for a while, but beyond that his defense is limited. He’s a prototypical lumbering seven-footer who struggles away from the rim, and he doesn’t create a lot of turnovers. His rebounding is famously anemic on defense, but it should be mentioned the Nets have actually done slightly better on the defensive boards with him on the court for a large chunk of his career. He’s not as large a liability on the boards as most think, partially due to the player-team interactions and diminishing returns of rebounding itself.

Thankfully, Thaddeus Young fits well next to Lopez because he’s a quick defender who’s better at defending the perimeter. However, the positives end there, as the rest of the frontcourt will have trouble defending real NBA teams. Thomas Robinson is aggressive and athletic, but his size limits his impact. The only other experienced big man on the bench is Andrea Bargnani, who’s in the running for worst frontcourt defender of the modern era. His defensive awareness is low and he offers very little help. He’s a poor rebounder who doesn’t block or pick up steals. His only positive is low post defense, which Dwight Howard apparently failed to pick up on.

The problems don’t end there. While Bogdanovic is one of the few bright spots for the franchise locking down the small forward slot with some semblance of stability, point guard is now a mess. The problem isn’t just the loss of Deron Williams; it’s about who they have to replace them. The team was absolutely horrendous with Jarret Jack last season. He’s a shoot-first combo guard with few skills other than scoring, and he’s been losing that ability as he goes further into his 30’s. And with the exception of an unknown player breaking out, they have no other options behind him. It’s a tough problem to have: your best players aren’t anything special, and your team has all the depth of a driveway puddle after a light shower.

Quick statistic/graph

If someone laments the lack of the scoring “true” seven-footer, note Brook Lopez and his scoring prowess. Even with troubled ankles and a league emphasizing driving and shooting skills, he’s one of the highest scoring centers per possession since full possession stats have been tracked (1974.) These are career values, so it’s a bit unfair to Kareem, whose pre-1974 seasons weren’t counted but his late 30’s seasons were. But it still shows it’s possible to be a high scorer and a traditional center. Just don’t expect that skill on its own to lead a team to a title.

Table: points per 100 possession leaders for C’s and PF/C’s

 Summary

The Nets are going to be worse than most people expect. It’s for the usual reasons too. Firstly, they were “lucky” that they won 38 games because their team rating suggested a 33 win team. Also, their best players just aren’t good enough to lift a weak supporting cast. With Deron Williams on the court, the team outscored its opponents by 6.7 points per 100 possessions; with Jack on the court last season, they were outscored by an eye-popping 10.7 points. They’ll have to rely on the health of Brook Lopez, whose backup is unfortunately Bargnani, a plus/minus ghoul who finished third from the bottom for 2015 RAPM[8.This was a multi-year model where the most recent seasons were weighed more heavily.] just ahead of Byron Mullens and Zach LaVine. Good luck, Brooklyn, and don’t be surprised if you’re in the race for a high lottery pick and not the playoffs.

PBP-Metric[6. This is the initial version of my own metric, which uses a full range of stats from 15 seasons collected from play-by-play logs and tested extensively to avoid overfitting.]: 24.3

PT-PM: 25

Nick‘s[7. For a short description, the predictions use regression models and neural networks to apply various stats like BPM, RAPM, and Win Shares to 10,000 simulations of the season game-by-game to select the “best” result.]: 28

Nathan Walker: 21