The Brooklyn Nets are on hiatus. The team is playing, and losing, this time by 19 points at home to the Boston Celtics. But everything, including the development of certain players is put on hold while Jeremy Lin remains sidelined with a hamstring injury.
We mentioned the silence from the Nets front office when it comes to status updates on Lin and other players injury status. I’m assuming the players know a lot more about when Lin is coming back when compared to the media and fans. I can understand the approach of complete and utter silence from the team about such things, but it doesn’t mean I agree with it. I’m not a Nets fan, but I do think fans are more than just consumers. However, the whole ‘whether a sports franchise is just a business or something else’ debate is for another time.
Back to the Nets. They had some nice moments in the third quarter to make thier home game against the Celtics interesting, but then it slipped away from them, losing 92-111. A fifth consecutive loss, another game in which there’s no defense and when there’s some sort of tipping the scales moment, the offense completely shuts down, regardless who is on the floor.
When this season was planned and began, the whole idea was seeing what’s going to work or not moving forward. Lin and Lopez (although I doubt the Nets aren’t keeping their ears open about a trade) first, everyone else are all being tested. Who works and who doesn’t in the new offense, and who has a chance of developing into a useful players for years to come, or who isn’t cut out for this s***.
The problem with Lin not playing is that it’s hard to make any assesments. Isaiah Whitehead might look like an NBA point guard from time to time, but the rest of his minutes he’s basically signalling that he needs D-League time and quickly. The same can be said about Yogi Ferrell. Sean Kilpatrick? He scored 23 points off the bench to lead the Nets in the loss, but he’s not a point guard, and he needs Lin, or some for of capable point guard, to help him find his spots.
Trevor Booker does his work and gets his numbers no matter what happens, but he doesn’t influence the game. Brook Lopez can look immense and unstoppable one moment, and then turn into a sluggish giant who seems winded and out of breath, too slow to cope with the direction of the game. Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, despite a few good games here and there, has mostly been a massive disappointment when it comes to offense.
The Nets right now are basically the worst team in the NBA, or competing very hard with the bottom group. They will be that way until Lin joins them again, fully healthy, with no hamstring worries. He might not be making franchise-player money, but saying the Nets look lost without him is one of the understatements of the year.