EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. – When the offseason started, the Brooklyn Nets were in a weird space. They had a bunch of veteran talent, making a ton of money with no success to show from it. A couple of years ago a plan came across to bring in Deron Williams and pair him with Joe Johnson, Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Brook Lopez to chase a championship. That plan quickly and dramatically fell short. It didn’t work out and usually when a team takes such a calculated risk to chase a big ring, they proceed to take a couple of years off and take a step back. They rebuild.
Williams, Pierce and Garnett are gone and all that remains is Joe Johnson on an expiring contract, which has him getting paid the second most money in the NBA this season, and Brook Lopez who, alongside Thaddeus Young, just locked in a new deal to stay in Brooklyn for the foreseeable future.
So the Nets kind of forced themselves to be somewhat competitive, despite most of their past big money guys being gone. It’s no surprise that when Nets coach Lionel Hollins spoke to the media at a sit down on Thursday, he told everyone he doesn’t think this season will be a rebuilding year for Brooklyn, despite the team being the youngest they’ve had in recent memory.
“I don’t care about (predictions),” Hollins said. “You can have your projections. Everybody does. I listen to those guys every morning talk football, they have their projections. It doesn’t matter. What does it matter? We’re still going to go play.”
He then talked about the 2015 NBA Finals between the Golden State Warriors & Cleveland Cavaliers as evidence that youth trumps age in today’s NBA.
“Cleveland has Shawn Marion. Cleveland has James Jones. Cleveland has Mike Miller. Cleveland has Kendrick Perkins. Might be another. They can’t play against Golden State in the Finals,” Hollins said. “They can’t get in the game. So they had no subs, they had no depth. You’ve got to have people that can get up and down the court, and cover people, and run with people, and compete against people.
“I mean, you like veterans, you like experience. But old is old, and young is better.”
Although young is better, and the Nets sure have a lot of that with new players like Shane Larkin, Thomas Robinson, rookie Rondae Hollis-Jefferson and Willie Reed, it doesn’t mean they’ll be better. This team needs to find a new identity post-Deron and it’s not really clear what that will look like. Hollins himself isn’t exactly sure what identity the team will have this season.
“I don’t have a system,” Hollins said. “Everybody thinks I have a damn system. I don’t have a system. I look at what we have as a group and I try to put together something that fits the group, and sometimes it works, and sometimes you have to move and change and go to a different system. But I don’t have a system.”
“I have some ideas of how I want to play. And we’ll try to figure out during training camp whether or not we can. And if push comes to shove, if we have to go all the way back to that, we will.”
Who are the Brooklyn Nets? Well, I don’t know. Lionel Hollins doesn’t know and it sounds like Nets GM Billy King doesn’t know either but one thing is for sure, the coach doesn’t see this season as a ‘gap year’ as Billy King put it on Tuesday. They’re the Nets and we’ll learn what version of the team we’ll get after the first tip-off in October.
