The Nets Have Bounced Back From the Dumb Trade That Defined a Generation

The Rebuild
Jul 25, 2017 · 4 min read

The Official Rebuild Podcast will launch sometime next month. Cool, right? Well, in order for it to be cool I need your questions, so I can subsequently answer them. Email your NBA-related questions to therebuildjake@gmail.com. Thanks and enjoy the blog.

I spend a lot of time on here talking about dumb teams and smart teams. It’s how my mind organizes the league. I think it’s fun and I think it’s entertaining. But it’s obviously pretty reductive.

Most teams exist somewhere in the middle. The only purely dumb teams in the league are the Magic, the Kings, and the Knicks. The only purely smart teams are the Warriors, the Spurs, and the Rockets. The Cavs and the Bulls are pretty close to being purely dumb. The Grizzlies and the Celtics are pretty close to being purely smart. Everyone else is a mixture. They’re smart or dumb from moment-to-moment, season-to-season, or regime-to-regime.

Still, the smart-dumb team dichotomy is an interesting way to analyze the Brooklyn Nets. Mainly because every moment of the modern era of the Nets is defined by the dumbest thing any team has done this generation, and maybe the dumbest thing any team will do in any of our lifetimes.

Really, the disastrous Celtics-Nets trade didn’t just define the current era of both teams involved, but the modern era of the entire NBA. No team will ever be as dumb as the Nets were on that day ever again.

Look at the biggest trades since that one. The Timberwolves got a satisfactory haul for Kevin Love, but Andrew Wiggins is the only asset that remains. The Bulls got one pick swap and scraps for Jimmy Butler, the Kings got one pick and trash for DeMarcus Cousins, and the Pacers got a return for Paul George that will be described as “literally nothing” in the near future.

The Nets’ absurd mistake changed the value of stars, the value of picks, and the way teams approach trades. The mistake that made the Nets irrelevant for three years (and counting) likely made the league smarter as a whole.

But that era is over in Brooklyn. Billy King is gone, Pierce, KG, Joe Johnson, Deron Williams, and even old Brook Lopez are all gone. Unhinged Nets owner Mikhail Prokorhov seems to have checked out, or at least taken a wise hands-off approach.

Now, instead of being the shining example of the dumbest team in history, the Nets are proof of just how easy it is to move back into that vaunted “smart” category.

After 2015, the Nets had nothing but Brook. Their veterans were gone, their most enticing young player was Shane Larkin, or Sean Kilpatrick, or Rondae Hollis-Jefferson — it doesn’t really matter. Andrea Bargnani was on the team. They had no picks, the only source of hope for a team so deprived of talent.

Yet, two years later, the Nets’ situation looks better than somewhere between four and seven teams in their own conference. The long, dreadful pick famine is over in Brooklyn after next year. They even found a way back into the 2018 draft by taking on the Demarre Carroll contract from Toronto. They’ll also have three or four second round picks, depending on how some things shake out.

They have D’Angelo Russell, they have a good coach, and they have smart leadership. They have other young, fun pieces bouncing around the roster, and they have absolute freedom. They’re committed to nothing. It’s better to be committed to something good, but it’s even worse to be committed to something awful.

And all the Nets have done to get here is what everyone knows a team in their position should do. They put smart people in charge and let them work. They got rid of their vets and let their young players play. They did absolutely whatever they could to get back into the draft, or acquire interesting young players. And they didn’t desperately try to string together “competitive” team by signing free agents to contracts they didn’t deserve.

So the team that did the dumbest thing ever became smart again over the course of a couple of years. And they did it without getting massively lucky, or doing anything revolutionary. It was pretty easy. If you’re out there rooting for a dumb team, the Nets could give you some hope. If the Nets can turn it around, why can’t the Kings, the Knicks, or the Magic?

At the same time, you can look at the pretty obvious things the Nets did to turn their sinking ship around and ask, “What’s been stopping my team from doing that?”

The Rebuild

Lots of words on basketball. I get mad easy. Blogs by Jake Hirsohn probably. Read tweets @FettyYeJepsen. Send NBA questions to TheRebuildJake@gmail.com.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade