Johnson, Ellington, Larkin and Sloan are all bad players. Those aren't losses.
And we're really doing per game averages when one guy had Favors and Gobert ahead of him suppressing his playing time? Ok then... That's a fools errand but have at it. Their replacing Robinson with their 1st round pick from a few years ago, Jack's injured awfulness with Lin, the Larkin abomination with Vasquez, getting back RHJ, upgrading defensively at PF because Young was a bad defender, and getting a coach who isn't the east coast version of Byron Scott.
This is a team that was barely breaking double digit 3 point attempts per game for the first month or two getting a guy who's from the Spurs tree, that's a massive upgrade.
Talk about spin! You should be in sales. I'm sure the Nets ticket office could use your help.
(1) Yes, we are going to talk about per-game averages when the player in question is going to be 29 years old and has been in the league 6 years for two different teams. Expecting a breakout season from such a player is possible but unlikely.
(2) They are replacing Robinson with an untested, coming-off-an-injury 1st round pick from a few years ago. This may or may not be an upgrade.
(3) They get an upgrade with Lin over Jack. This is, however, the equivalent of replacing lima beans with plain cauliflower. There is a reason Lin is going to be on his 6th team in 6 years and it is not because he is a good player.
(4) They are replacing Larkin's awfulness with Greivis Vasquez's awfulness (another guy on his 6th team).
(5) They do get back RHJ. It was not like he was a major impact player last year though.
(6) There is no possible way anyone could consider them "upgraded" at PF at this stage. That's laughable.
Anyone can make the argument that virtually any team is better at this point in the offseason unless that team loses a superstar like OKC or Miami. But when you look at a team and compare it to the rest of the league it's hard to see how the Nets suddenly are a significantly better team than their competition. At best the Nets have a more cohesive roster this year rather than some considerable upgrade in talent level. But compared to the other bottom feeders in the East they lost ground. The 76ers added Saric, Bayless, Henderson and the #1 overall pick in the draft. The Knicks think they're a "superteam" now. Orlando added Ibaka among other pieces. The Bucks have better, younger talent than anyone outside of Lopez.
We will see once they play the games. But Vegas has the Nets as the overwhelmingly worst team in the league and the guys who do this with literally hundreds of millions of dollars on the line are rarely wrong. It happens every so often but I'll stick with the odds the experts set in this case.
The Nets are simply a bad team. Without Lopez for the year they would be contenders to set the all-time worst mark.
Name one thing Thad Young is actually good at... Defense? Nah. Shooting? Nah. Rebounding? Nah. Dribbling? Nah.
He's pretty good at opportunistic scoring I guess, but this is his 4th team in 3 years, 3 of which were bottom 3 teams. But yeah, funny how that never got mentioned.
Jarrett Jack is awful, Vasquez is an upgrade over him if he's healthy again and regains his form. Let alone Lin, whose on/off in the playoffs was + 24 points per 100.
And RHJ was already an impact defender, which was a major weakness because neither Bogdanovic or Johnson guarded anybody. And considering Robinson is out of the league I highly doubt McCullogh can be any worse.
And you still haven't addressed getting rid of Lionel Hollins who was terrible.
You've said this a few times, I'm not sure why?
Lionel Hollins is considered one of the better coaches in the NBA.
He took the Grizzlies to 56 wins and the Western Conference finals.
Multiple coach of the month awards and multiple votes for coach of the year by his fellow coaches.
Because he was awful last year. Coach of the month and coach of the year awards are an NBA circle jerk. It's like citing Derek Jeter's Gold Gloves despite the fact that he was one of the worst defensive players in baseball history in terms of total runs he cost his team. Let's review!
Here's Zach Lowe on Lionel Hollins' offensive system:
"The Nets are shooting 21 percent from 3 on 12.7 attempts per game, like we're all chilling in the mid-90s."
Here's Zach Lowe on Hollins' defensive system:
"Prob not a coach alive who could turn BKN into a good team on D, but inexplicable why Nets hedged on PNRs tonight like Dirk was screening."
And here's Lionel Hollins openly admitting he's not doing his job:
"I don't try to analyze everything. I see it and I know what it is. But what good does it do for me to stay up all night and analyze it and try to figure out how to make it different when we don't have Kevin Durant, we don't have Russell Westbrook (and) we don't have LeBron James?"
But at least he offered these inspiring leader:
"We are who we are," he continued, honestly, "and if we go out and play together as a team and work as a group and try to be disciplined in what we're doing, we give ourselves a chance. That's all you can do. If you're not good enough to win those games, because of the other team's talent, you've still done all you can do and you just go home and go to bed."
Topic: If Brook Lopez were out for 2016-17, how many games do the Nets win? (Read 12552 times)