The Brooklyn Nets aren’t exactly the best team in the NBA this season, for a few reasons. They can’t hit any three’s their defense is suspect and they don’t have a solid NBA point guard. Jarrett Jack and Shane Larkin are decent point guards and they are good in short spurts but having them as starters is not an ideal situation.
As the Nets get poised to finally have a summer with a whole lot of cap room, they are looking to possibly make a big change towards the future of the success of the team. Their current coach, Lionel Hollins, has a strong relationship with an impending 2016 free agent, Memphis Grizzlies point guard Mike Conley. The point guard once called Hollins his ‘second father’ and the relationship between the two could be pivotal in Conley’s recruitment.
Following from Chris Herrington of the Commercial Appeal.
Mike Conley’s impending free agency is unlikely to garner as many headlines as Marc Gasol’s did last season, but expect the Brooklyn Nets to be for Conley what the Knicks were for Gasol: The big market alternative to whom he’ll be connected. The Nets — 29th in my predicted rankings last week — are a mess this season from which there is no rescue.
They’re still a teardown at this stage, not a rebuild, with only one young player of true note (and that a late-first-rounder in Rondae Hollis-Jefferson) and a roster packed with mid-career journeymen. With next year’s top pick owed to the Celtics without protection, the Nets will be looking to free agency for answers, this in a summer with a middling free agent class and nearly every team in the league flush with cap room.
Conley is thought by those around the team to be the most likely top target, with the presence of his former coach, Lionel Hollins, presumed to be a drawing card. Come to the world’s greatest city to play for your beloved old coach and a young star center (Brook Lopez), and maybe bring another notable free agent (Toronto’s Demar DeRozan?) along with you. Do I take this scenario seriously? I do not. But it’s early.
And ESPN’s Mike Mazzeo sheds some light on how difficult it might be for the Nets to reel in Conley.
Conley has spent his entire career — eight full seasons and counting — in Memphis. His relationship with fellow cornerstone Marc Gasol is strong, and the Grizzlies will be able to offer him an extra year and some $30 million-plus more in salary compensation based on how the CBA works (exact numbers after the national TV deal kicks in and the cap spikes as a result, pending).
For the Nets, the lure of Conley being the starting point guard in the Eastern Conference under a coach he loves could appeal to him more than anything Marc Gasol was getting from the New York Knicks. For the first time in his career, if he comes to the Eastern Conference, Conley could be an All-Star and he could make it far with some talent that the Nets have. Conley would be the focal point of the team, he’d have the ball in his hands at all times and he could work with one of the most talented big men in the NBA, Brook Lopez. Hollins also has up to potentially two years remaining on his current contract with the team and his security with the team could be a point of interest for Conley.
the Nets have a chance, but then again, everyone has a chance in the summer of 2016. Over 20 teams will have max cap room, so Conley will be sure to have his list of suitors.
