Nets Season Preview

The Nets come off a 41-41 season with optimism that this year’s team will be healthier and more successful. Last year the Nets team was to be kind inconsistent, to be more realistic not very good. The season was beset by injuries to key players, like Nenad Krstic who missed most of the season and Richard Jefferson who played a good portion of the season hurt before finally having to sit out about a month with that injury. When your third best player for a large stretch of the season is Miki Moore inconsistency is not to be unexpected. This is not to say Moore didn’t do a great job, but let’s be honest who’d ever really heard of Miki Moore before last season? Luckily the Nets were playing in a very weak eastern conference and were able to relatively comfortably make the playoffs. The east figures to be much more competitive this year so the question is can the Nets be good enough to make the playoff or even compete for a championship?

Well the answer to the second question is clearly no, but the first question should be a yes.

Why won’t the Nets compete for a title? Well there are several reasons, but the elephant in the room is that Vince carter is just not a championship player. He’s never really won anything in his career and in crunch time he’s more likely to turn the ball over then actually score. I would have loved for the Nets to get rid of him and if you want to know why, read this article I wrote in June.

So why will the Nets make the playoffs? Despite what John Hollinger thinks and despite the team aging at key positions (Carter and Kidd) they still have Jason Kidd and Richard Jefferson. Jason Kidd is, at least on the basketball court, quite simply the anti-Stephon Marbury. He is a true point guard and a winner, when he’s on your team you simply have a better chance to win. He has made the playoffs each of the last 12 years. The Nets instantly turned into winners when he came to the team and haven’t looked back since.

Richard Jefferson, IMHO is one of the best players in the league. He hasn’t really had the chance to show whether he could be a true number one option, but it seems he’s more suited for a Scotty Pippen type role. Unfortunately there’s no Michael Jordan on this team. The nets should get a good year out of him and I see no reason he won’t average at least 18 points and 5.5 boards up from the 16 and 4.4 he hobbled to last season.

The X factors?

I’ll give you three.

1) Will the Nets actually run an offense? When Vince Carter is off the floor they tend to run a fluid offense with movement and running and passing. However when Carter is on the court they often set high picks for him with the three other guys standing around doing nothing. This will not work this year as Miki Moore, a very good pick-and-roll guy is gone and it didn’t even work all that well last year. If the Nets run a true offense and move the ball they will be much more successful.

2) How good is Nenad? Nenad Krstic statistically is the Nets best big man and was last year as well. However even before he got hurt the Nets were struggling. Can he get back to top form and/or improve? Can the Nets integrate him into their fluid offense of which I was speaking of in x factor one? Solid contributions from Nenad will be crucial to a successful season.

3) Can the Nets get anything from their bench? Assuming a starting lineup of Collins, Kristic, Jefferson, Carter and Kidd, what will they get from the bench? One assumes Marcus Williams and Josh Boone will continue to progress and hopefully the Nets can count on them for some solid minutes. Boggie Nochbar was a solid contributor off the bench but came out of nowhere to do it. Was he a one year wonder? I say no. Those three will have to carry the bench as jamal magloire, malik allen and Antoine Wright can’t be counted on for much. Shawn Williams could be an x factor of his own, but if he can stay drug free, (a huge IF) he should eventually be able to steal a good amount of minutes from Collins based on his defensive ability and athleticism.

Prediction? The Nets are a slightly better than .500 team winning around 43 games and getting whatever playoff spot that garners which is probably somewhere around the 6th-7^th seed. From there I give them a 40% chance to make the second round obviously varying based on the opponent.