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Brooklyn Nets (Projected Record: 29-53)

It got less notice and was much less difficult to behold than Gordon Haywards’ injury, but the loss of Jeremy Lin was also fairly significant for Brooklyn. He projected as their best player, which says less about Lin and more about where the Nets are right now.

My projections, as touched on before, are fairly conservative and lean heavily on prior performance and mean regression, with modest improvements projected for younger players as they gain experience and modest declines projected for older players as they lose their struggle with Father Time. Brooklyn outright stole D’Angelo Russell, and through the first few games of the season, he looks like he’s making a non-linear, non-modest leap. That’s not uncommon for highly drafted prospects in their third years, but my system is simple and doesn’t account for all that. So my numbers projected Russell as a roughly replacement level player, after he was worse than that in his first two years in the league. He’s in a new context now, though, with a new coach, free rein, and low team expectations. Right now, he seems to be really flourishing, so I could be way off on the Nets, as I project Russell to play quite a lot this year.

Beyond Russell, the Nets have a grip of young, rangy guards and wings who project to be pretty average this year in Caris LeVert, Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, and DeMarre Carroll. The Nets’ biggest weakness, assuming Russell’s early season play isn’t a mirage and he doesn’t regress (I believe in him, for what that’s worth), is their big man rotation. Timofey Mozgov projects to be just a shade over replacement level and Trevor Booker protects to be a pretty below average starter.  Given Russell’s early play, I’d expect my 29 win projection to be an underestimate and perhaps a significant one.