Is it Time to Worry About the Nets Pick?
The Eastern Conference just might be bad enough to make the Boston Celtics worry about the Nets pick
The Boston Celtics already have the two best young players on the team courtesy of the Brooklyn Nets, and are still waiting for the final piece. In what is looking like another stacked top draft class, the Celtics could be in line to get an even better young player next season.
The Nets were far and away the worst team in the NBA last year. Even with no incentive to tank, they had that last spot in the standings on lock down for the majority of the season.
The problem now, however, is that the Eastern Conference has put in a lot of work to get teams with rosters as bad as the Nets. The Hawks have gutted their roster for a rebuild, the Bulls and Pacers lost the franchise guy that was carrying them, and the Knicks continue to be a mess.
Jeremy Lin is confident enough to make a playoff appearance prediction, but there’s a long ways to go before that needs to be taken seriously. The East is bad this year, but the worst roster in the East is not even remotely a playoff threat.
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There are multiple teams who will be doing everything they can to find a way to be worse than the Nets, but that may still not be enough.
As bad as the Nets were last year, they lost their best player by a significant margin in Brook Lopez, especially now that he is a real three point threat. The Nets did not bring in a player that is even the fraction of what Lopez is, and they are banking on a lot of young and unknown players behind a fast coach to get out of the bottom.
The bottom of the East has gotten bad enough that it is fair to question whether or not the Nets will have the worst record in the league. That being said, it is hard to imagine them falling out of the top three or five, in which case the Celtics will still have a chance at one of these prospects that were already being talked about last year.
The most important thing is that there are options. The Celtics obviously want that Nets pick to be number one, but they do not need it to. There is Michael Porter Jr, there is Mohamed Bamba, there is DeAndry Ayton and then some.
Being worried about the Nets pick means being worried that they wont be a bottom five team when they unquestionably have one of the five worst rosters in the NBA, with a great claim at the worst roster.
Similar to last year, the only edge the Nets get is having no reason to tank, but there is not enough talent on that team for that to be the difference. That is unless DeAngelo Russell miraculously breaks out as a top 10 point guard and we get a long term repeat of Linsanity.
The Nets added some solid young payers this offseason, but the product they put on the court is not going to be any better, and it will take a collective effort to replace what Lopez did just to get back to what they were as the worst team in the league last year.
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The Nets are exactly where the Celtics would have wanted them to be at this time with this draft coming up, and it is hard to imagine the bottom of the East being bad enough to hurt what could easily be the best part of the trade haul.