Nets have set themselves up for murky future with bleak present

Everything moves in cycles. One day something cool like this happens:

The next day you’re six years older, all those players are gone, there’s a vague nightmare memory of a toe on a 3-point line, your team has drafted every non-shooting ball-handler they can, and your depth chart looks like this:

Their two best players are best as number-three or number-four scoring options. They have one functional spine between them. The closest thing they have to a veteran is Terance Mann. Their big first round swing, Egor Demin, doesn’t even have a face on ESPN’s Nets’ roster page. Drew Timme is employed.

I don’t want to be mean, but this could be extremely rough to watch. I’m going to feel bad for the Liberty fans who decide to check in on their second team over the course of the NBA season. Going from watching a collection of champions to watching this roster could very well cause whiplash. People sue for that shit.

What I’m saying is maybe don’t be surprised if this is one of the tankiest tank seasons of all time. I am not a college basketball expert because I’m not an expert on anything, but looking at that list of 14 names above, it’s hard to imagine any single one of them putting the team on their back for 82 competitive games.

Again, apologies to Michael Porter Jr. He couldn’t do that even if he wanted to.

Abandon hope of the Brooklyn Nets being a competitive team this year

So for any Brooklyn Nets fans who are here, I have advice for you:

Please try to avoid placing any actual monetary bets on the Nets doing something positive. Not only is it unlikely, but you don’t get the pessimistic benefit of really wanting your team to suck and then seeing it happen. Bad things can be good things if you pretend really hard.

Please do not expect much more than a few guys showing flashes of a player they may later become. They are not that player yet. They may be one day, but it’s easy to get caught up in a five-game streak and think that a certain player has permanently turned a corner. There are many corners in life. Some kind of lead you back in the opposite direction of where you were trying to go.

Please don’t give up hope. Even if the team is absolute horrible fire trash juice (it’s on the table), that doesn’t mean they’re going to be that way forever. The Pistons lost 28 games in a row the year before, they were the Eastern Conference sixth seed. Sure, it took a while, but even in what are perceived to be bad situations, growth can happen. I guess. Somehow. Go Pistons.

Please don’t let MPJ do a podcast. For everyone’s sake. He’s going to have something incredibly stupid to say about Zohran Mamdani at some point, and it’s probably best that idea lives and dies in his own brain. Like worms.

Please remember you are dead.