The Brooklyn Nets like what they see from Caris LeVert

It’s been a challenging season for the Brooklyn Nets, and not in precisely the way it figured to be, here in year one of the Sean Marks/Kenny Atkinson era. A team that expected to finish near the bottom of the league has lived up to that advanced billing, with a 9-47 record through the All-Star break.

But the Nets expected this to be a year of evaluation, a chance to see what some of the pieces they had collected onto this makeshift roster could be in the coming years. Chief among these are Jeremy Lin, signed to a three-year, $36 million contract to run the team from the point, and Caris LeVert, the rangy shooting guard Brooklyn selected with the first round pick it acquired from Indiana for Thaddeus Young.

Lin has enjoyed success when he’s played, but those moments have been brief: his player efficiency rating is 19.8 this year, virtually identical to the 19.9 he posted in the year of Linsanity, but he’s played just 12 games in 2016-17. LeVert, meanwhile, has become a fan favorite in Lin’s stead, impressing the Brooklyn faithful and his team alike with tantalizing defensive stops, monster finishes and a perimeter shot that is as artful as it is hopeful.

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Now, with Lin finally returning from a hamstring injury that’s sidelined him for much of the season, and Bojan Bogdanovic shipped to Washington for a 2017 first round pick, the Nets have an opportunity to see what their backcourt of the future looks like. And LeVert sure looks like a big part of that picture.

“He needs more game reps,” Atkinson said of LeVert following Thurday’s practice in Brooklyn. “He’s been surprisingly good in the pick-and roll, that’s been a really pleasant surprise. I think as the season goes on, you’ll see him featured more there. I’ve been happy with that. And I think his shooting numbers, his efficiency numbers, will get better as he gets more comfortable. Right now he’s trying to figure out: what’s the right shot? What is my role? So part of this end of season is defining his role a little better, defining his position a little better.”

Watching LeVert at the end of practice, you’d never know he was a point guard who only shifted positions following a late growth spurt shot him up to 6-foot-7 with a 6-foot-10 wingspan. Shooting jumpers next to Lin and Spencer Dinwiddie, his mechanics looked effortless by comparison, the result of spending hours in the gym during his time at Michigan, using only the metric of shooting until his arms got too tired to let him know when he was finished.

With the Nets, LeVert is more focused on making sure he’s doing the right kind of work. Suffering injuries that ended LeVert’s final two seasons in college prematurely forced him to alter his thinking on the subject.

“I think in college, I was somebody who worked more hard than smart,” LeVert said after concluding his shooting regimen. “And now I think I work more smart. I’m still getting extra work in, but after practice: I have a set number of shots to get up — 100 shots. And get out of the gym. Ice your legs, ice your knees. Whereas in college, I’d say I was working harder, so I was shooting until my arms got tired. And that’s not necessarily smart, especially when we play 82 games here. So you have to preserve your body, and do a little bit each and every day.”

The impact he’s had on the Nets has been immediate, if sporadic. LeVert is shooting 54.5 percent on 2-pointers, but only 30.3 percent on 3-pointers, though his mechanics, college accuracy and free throw percentage suggests that latter number will come up in time. He’s been the team’s most efficient isolation scorer and defender of isos as well, per the NBA’s play type statistics, but his overall efficiency lags well behind within the team context.

LeVert sees this the same way Atkinson does, though: merely a question of getting acclimated.

“In college I know I was strong in isolation as well,” LeVert said. “But I got comfortable within the framework of the offense, and then the other parts of my game became more efficient on the court. I think it’ll be the same this way.”

He acknowledged that his greater comfort level comes with the ball in his hands, thanks to all that point guard training. Still, there have been plenty of moments this year when the versatility his skill set promises have flashed before our eyes.

LeVert drew the assignment of guarding, and being guarded by, LeBron James back on Jan. 6. He delighted the home crowd by scoring 19 points, dishing out 5 assists, grabbing 4 rebounds and committing just a single turnover. The Nets were surprisingly competitive, losing just 116-108. And after it was over, LeVert noticed something.

“I would never say there was a moment where I felt like I didn’t belong,” LeVert said. “But a moment where everybody else seemed to feel that way? That game against the Cavs at home. That was a pretty big moment, that was a moment everyone else felt like I belonged. But I always felt that way.”

The final third of the season, for LeVert, is about getting physically stronger, lifting upper and lower body so he can get more comfortable banging with other bigger wings when asked. But he’s on the right team to measure performance in more specific ways, too — Atkinson touted their constant monitoring of the numbers, and LeVert does the same thing.

“I’m just trying to get better,” LeVert said. “So my numbers so far, I’m just trying to get better from those. Whether it’s defensive efficiency — guarding the pick-and-roll — rebounding, assisting, shooting percentage, I’m just trying to get better at that.”

And now he’ll get the chance to do it next to Lin. The Nets finally get a closer look at their backcourt of the future, which played just 18 minutes and 50 seconds together in the first 56 games of the year.

“Even though we’re not in a great position this year, what’s really exciting for us is, let’s see what these pieces together mean, what it looks like going forward from the All-Star Break to the end of the season,” Atkinson said. “It’s really important for our organization to see who fits together, and how it all mixes.”