Have your fun with the Nets while you can

If you’re a Celtic fan throwing shade at the Nets via the presence on their roster of one Kyrie Andrew Irving, it is probably wise to get your schadenfreude while you can.

You may see these guys in the first round of the playoffs if the C’s get the 2-seed and Brooklyn moves up to 7, but beginning next year you may not want to see them at all. A team led by Kevin Durant and Irving will be decidedly different than the one that took the Garden floor Tuesday evening.

But even without Durant (torn Achilles’ tendon) for the entire season and with Irving playing just 20 games before going on the shelf/gurney for shoulder surgery, the Nets have managed to keep their head above the lottery water, with even the four-game losing streak they carried into Boston still keeping them four games clear of ninth-place Washington.

Of course, it helps that, once you get beyond the cream of the conference, the East grades on the curve.

But Spencer Dinwiddie is legit, and Joe Harris is the kind of 3-point floor spacer coveted in today’s NBA. And there is more.

And if the Nets can stay in the fight as is, what are they going to look like next season when they acquire two All-Stars without giving up anything?

Sure, there were similar thoughts here last season when Irving and Gordon Hayward came back to the Shamrock flock, but while there may be some lingering health issues for both Irving and Durant, no one of sound mind wouldn’t take the latter over Hayward in any two-out-of-three-falls match.

A lot of the Celtic problem stemmed from the emergence of Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown and Terry Rozier into prominent usage roles in the absence of Irving and Hayward and their reluctance to give back too much. And that’s before you get to the Kyrie Factor.

Dinwiddie will no doubt need to be kept in the offensive loop, but he and everyone else should be able to easily understand and accept their place on the Brooklyn food chain. Even with some interesting egos atop the rotation, the Nets could have so much talent as to be fail-safe.

And if they still find a way to screw it up, that line will be etched onto their 2020-21 headstone: “Too good to fail — but we did it anyway.”

The downside of what’s happening now — and this is a credit to the players and coach Kenny Atkinson — is that they’re being too successful to reap the full benefits of what is essentially a redshirt year for the franchise.

Indeed, it’s been a strange year.

“Every year is a strange year in the NBA,” Atkinson said before Tuesday’s tipoff. “That’s what I’m learning as a head coach. It’s never what you think it’s going to be. I think it helps you grow.

“Not having those guys, obviously it’s not ideal, but we’ve also learned a lot about the team, learned a lot about our players. You learn a lot through these struggles and the fight, kind of the desperate fight we’re going through now to get in the dance. So I look at it positively.”

You’d think that missing their two best players would ground them enough to get a nice lottery pick as consolation (see: Golden State with Klay Thompson and Steph Curry, even though he’s soon to return). But the Nets only get to keep their own first-rounder if it is 1-through-14. Otherwise Minnesota gets it. They’d have the Warriors’ pick if it falls after 20, which isn’t going to happen, and will get Philadelphia’s because that won’t be in the lottery.

Even with what’s not expected to be a stacked draft, it’d still be nice to add a prospect or have an asset to deal. But that’s not a dilemma for the Nets.

“The message from ownership and Sean (Marks, the Nets’ GM) is like, man, go for it,” said Atkinson, who reported that Irving’s surgery “went perfectly” earlier in the day. “Our job is to get in the playoffs. We’ve been that way since the beginning. We’re not going to change now and worry about picks and all that.”

But such is life in what has been a quirky season in Brooklyn. There was no question things would be a bit off-kilter when the Nets signed Durant, knowing they would have to pay him to sit for a year. And there have been some typical Irving moments, such as repeating his Celtic criticism of a year prior that Brooklyn needed to add pieces. When he caught flak for that, Kyrie chose to fight out of weight class in his response:

“When I was out for those seven weeks and not saying anything people are still saying things about me,” he said. “It’s inevitable. They crucified Martin Luther King for speaking about peace and social integration. You can go back to historical leaders and great people in society that do great things, and they’re still going to talk (expletive) about them. It is what it is.”

Had to take a standing eight-count when I heard that one.

Atkinson said there was knowledge gained in Irving’s 20-game stint.

“I learned a lot,” he said. “I’ll learn more this summer. I’m going to get to spend a lot more time with him, because that’s where the real progress is with our relationship. But I got a good grip on who he is as a player and where he fits. You know, now throw the KD piece in and figuring out how they’re going to work together, that’s going to probably take some time.”

But the future is also now for Brooklyn, as Atkinson will point out at every opportunity.

“Anybody that says, ‘Oh, we’re waiting for next year,’ it’s like, no,” he said. “We’re building for next year. I think this will help us down the line. I’ve told KD and Kyrie, I said, ‘We don’t need you guys flying in on your cape. We’d love to have you fly in in your capes, but this will be good for us to go through this, what we’re going through now.’ I really believe that.”

If so, Greenhearts had best get in their shots now.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3cv7sgY