With the Knicks missing the playoffs again, there’s room for Brooklyn to steal some of New York City’s attention and prestige, but an over-eager front office has stuffed the roster full of unmovable contracts and killed their ability to renew the process with draft picks or other assets. Russian billionaire Prokhorov can absorb these losses, but there’s only so much you can do when you’re miles over the cap. He’ll be bailed out soon by a rising tide in the cap due to the gigantic TV deal, but for now they’ll be stuck in the mud.
2014 in review
Brooklyn suffered a disjointed season, beginning with a nightmare scenario opening with a 9-17 record before Brook Lopez’s injury problems pushed him permanently off the team. This was disheartening for a team that brought in a batch of old all-stars with Pierce, Garnett, and Kirilenko to join Deron and Joe Johnson, and one that paid 90 million dollars in luxury taxes in its second season in Brooklyn — the Nets paid more in luxury taxes than any other team spent on its roster.
However, the team righted the ship after New Year’s, outscoring opponents by nearly 2 points per game and reaching 44 wins, after which they dispatched a strong team in the first round, Toronto, and made it as far as the second round. Since Brook was an all-star, it’s perplexing to some how they improved, but they experimented with a smallball lineup with Pierce or another forward like Teletovic or Kirilenko at power forward. With a big backcourt in Deron, Joe Johnson, or Shaun Livingston, it was a deceptively tricky team to defend. But all that money led them to being just a hair above mediocre, and they’re hampered long-term by huge contracts paying 60 million dollars total to a mere three players in Deron Williams, Joe Johnson, and Brook Lopez, and they have few assets.
Changes
Exit: Paul Pierce, Shaun Livingston, Andray Blatche, Marcus Thornton, Jason Terry, Reggie Evans, Tyshawn Taylor, Jason Collins, Tornike Shengelia.
Enter: Bojan Bogdanovic, Jarrett Jack, Sergey Karasev, Cory Jefferson, Markel Brown.
There are basically two sets of three players who are being swapped through the team. Piece was in his late 30’s, but he was still an effective offensive threat and took slower guys at power forward off the dribble and played solid defense. Livingston has recovered from his horrific knee injury and they’ll miss the three-guard lineups and him posting up smaller guys. Blatche is off to China, and although his scoring outbursts may seem redundant now with everyone else on the roster, I think the team’ll miss his “instant offense” on the bench. Bojan Bogdanovic (not to be confused with Bogdan Bogdanovic) is a versatile scoring small forward who may have a job in the starting rotation, at least with Alan Anderson sidelined with an abdominal injury. Jack will be the first guard off the bench in his familiar sixth man role. Finally, Brook Lopez is effectively a new player, and (if healthy) he’s going to drastically change the makeup of the team people knew from the playoffs.
Player spotlight
With all the famous veterans jammed onto the roster, Teletovic was largely forgotten by the public but he improved on his rookie year, adjusting to the NBA after years in Europe, to show off some prolific shooting at both forward positions. Via the bar chart below, he’s not a low volume shooting specialist but has mid-range volume. More importantly, he had the best three-point volume and catch-and-shoot rates in the entire league with slightly above average efficiency. He rarely gets to the free throw line and doesn’t pass much, but he can drive to the basket and his off-the-dribble game gives him a dimension that makes him more dangerous than typical shooting forwards. Not surprisingly, he was a part of their most successful lineups on offense.
Teletovic is coded as a small forward, but he spent a lot of time at power forward last year with their smallball schemes. Defensively, this was a bit of an issue: he doesn’t have the size to defend in the frontcourt, and from his rim protection numbers he doesn’t defend a large number of inside shots, which aligns with his league average block rate. The defensive metrics, like eFG% defense or various adjusted plus/minus models, all agree that he’s a poor defender. His rebounding, however, is fairly solid, and is usable at power forward. He just needs the right match-up if he’s in a smallball lineup.
Mirza’s shot chart is something out of a Houston Rockets dream. He can spot up in both corners and all around the top of the arc, but he rarely shoots a midrange jump shot and shoots at the rim fairly often. About 90% of his shots are inside of 10 feet or outside the three-point line. Although he shoots at a relatively low percentage compared to every other player, those shots are still efficient overall.
If there’s one game to show off Teletovic’s shooting talents, it’s his game where he had 7 three’s (6 in the first half alone) and finished with 34 points. He has a unique release, a little reminiscent of Matt Bonner, but he’ll take the shot even with a silver of daylight. He hits a few shots in the clips below over the outstretched hands of a defender. His utility in some lineups is as a drain cleaner, unclogging lanes with his spacing threat — important with Brook Lopez’s post-game.
The downside is the limitation Teletovic has on defense. In the first playlist below, which is only one video, he gets completely lost on defense (to be fair, his teammates are partly to blame) and even near the end he still isn’t in the right position. In the second embedded video set, Tobias Harris scores on him (link’s also here) in every made field goal but the first and fourth clips. In the second and third video, he comes out high on a pick and roll but doesn’t have the foot step to hurry back and prevent Harris from scoring at the rim. In the fifth, Harris drives right through him, and in the sixth he steps back for a pull-up jump shot Teletovic can’t contest.
While Teletovic has to be hidden on a non-scorer — he has neither the foot speed for small forwards nor the size for power forwards — he’s one of the best outside threats, especially in a downsized lineup. He shoots more three’s per possession than Stephen Curry, and it wasn’t even close. His top ranking in percentile underrated him: he’s at 13.1 3PA per 100 possessions; Curry was at 11.0. Historically, only Novak, JR Smith, and Dee Brown have shot more. It’s that kind of shooting threat that’ll be useful with the loss of Paul Pierce and others.
2015 projected
The crucial decision of the season is how to integrate Brook Lopez in with Garnett, young big man (and gold medalist) Mason Plumlee, and the remnants of the successful lineups from last season. The problem is that all three deserve playing time but they are all effectively centers.
Lopez is obviously a center, as his foot speed and lukewarm jumper make him a novelty at power forward, but Plumlee is where most positional designations get tripped up. Many sites list him as a power forward with little supporting evidence. He rarely shoots outside of ten feet, he’s seven-feet tall, and most of his lineups are paired with a frontcourt partner who is obviously not a center like Teletovic or Pierce. Since Plumlee rarely played with Lopez last season and Lopez’s patented slow man post-ups need plenty of space, one wonders if this pairing will be untenable. It would push a promising young center to the bench and, if Brook is healthy, would vastly reduce his minutes.
Garnett was slow in starting the season and missed a chunk of games, but his defense was, yet again, highly valuable. Some critics note that plus/minus models only rate him well because of a trailing effect based on his dominance in previous seasons, but my single-year ASPM, based only on counting stats in an expanded box score, saw him as one of the best defenders in the league at +4.6. His block and steal rates were virtually identical to his career averages, and he established a new career high in defensive rebound rate, though to be fair the team was one of the worst in rebounding and there were more to grab next to their smaller power forwards. Overall, the Nets were at their best defensively when he was on the court. But Garnett is not quick enough to play the perimeter consistently anymore, and he’s much more effective at center. This is unfortunate since Garnett’s range makes him a workable partner for Lopez in the post. (He had an unusually low shooting percentage last season, but that’s likely to recover.)
Due to the Nets signing a backup center in Jerome Jordan and (a failed attempt) to sign center N’Diaye at the same time in concert with Garnett starting next to Lopez in pre-season games, we can surmise the Nets have forgotten how they won last season and are attempting to reform Garnett and Plumlee into power forwards to appease Lopez. Plumlee may work as a 4 sometimes though. He commands defensive attention like Tyson Chandler does at his best as a lob threat at the rim; you can’t take your eye off him or turn your back. Unfortunately, Lopez isn’t a passing threat, and smart teams will know how to take advantage of them.
If it’s any indication, Lopez played well with Reggie Evans over the past two years when the two shared the court, and he has a near zero range. In general, however, modern offenses do not work well by playing through low-post behemoths. Memphis has had a mediocre offense despite having two highly talented low-post players, and Charlotte shipped in Al Jefferson, an extremely high usage center, and barely improved on offense despite already being bad. In Lopez’s all-star season, he rated as an average 0 on offense in my ASPM and a mere 1.6 in the previous version of RPM (adjusted plus/minus.) Brooklyn may want to run their offense through Brook, but it would be an unwise decision in some respects. They could find their most successful lineups without him on the court.
Deron Williams and Joe Johnson remain at the helm of the Nets, for better or worse. Deron’s become a shell of himself and the old arguments about him versus Chris Paul look ridiculous now. His defense reduces the impact of what’s left of his high-scoring bursts. Joe Johnson inexplicably made yet another all-star game, thanks to what was probably the worst eastern conference ever and the faulty logic of what John Hollinger called “proportional representation” that requires every relevant team to have a player in the game, even ensemble squads. He’s regressed and his defense is now arguably below average for his position, but these two players should be the driving forces of their offense.
There’s hope in the form of Bojan Bogdanovic, who may start at small forward. For a playoff appearance, they’ll need a surprise breakthrough performance, like Livingston and Plumlee last year. Kirilenko could have a better season, and he might be more of a force as a smallball 4. If they can replicate most of what Pierce gave them last season, they can weather the change.
Last season I was high on Brooklyn and thought Garnett and Pierce could fit in well. Now I’m one of the most pessimistic. There are a few factors here. I discussed how they found success without Lopez using Pierce, and that’s not possible anymore. Secondly, they won more games than their point differential suggested; in short, they overachieved and were actually outscored over the full season by a decent amount. Thirdly, Livingston is being replaced by Jarrett Jack, who rates as a terrible player across the board, even in a metric like PER. And perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that after his rookie contract with Portland, he played on five teams before Brooklyn in just six years. Although Jack played better in 2013, he was still only a net zero and he’s in his 30’s now. They’ll need him at his best to make the playoffs, but teams have been burned in the past counting on him.
Summary
Brook Lopez is back and healthy, but he’s not the player they need right now. Other teams have tried and failed with two-center lineups — Monroe and Drummond along with Asik and Howard — and Brooklyn only found its groove last year with small lineups either with Pierce or Teletovic as the nominal power forward. They’ll need some good fortune this season. They were lucky they made the playoffs, and rely on an aging core with the exception of a 26 year-old center with multiple foot injuries. And they’ll probably pay over 2 million dollars in luxury taxes for every win yet again.
Wins: 32
Losses: 50
Conference rank: 11th
League offense rank: 15th
League defense rank: 28th
Edited 10/27/14
