cl2117 wrote:hood30 wrote:celtxman wrote:They got out of the gate 0-7, had a huge ongoing roster shakeup, changed coaches and had no GM for a good part of the season. They were a rudderless ship. They now appear to have a good coach and the new GM is highly regarded. They don't have great talent, but they have already shown heart and hustle and I'd be surprised if they don't win more games than last year.
Have you watched the Net's games?...By the way, you are correct in your assessment...This Nets team is much better than last year team who had a lot of issues concerning coaches, system and they had no direction,,,They are now more stable with better direction.
Booker and Lin have both played well so far and looked to be upgrade to last year players at their position...Lin is hurt, but should be back in 2 weeks....These 2 players alone, if they stay healthy, should improve Nets by a lot of games.
The Nets are certainly better this year, but they also had a fully healthy Brooke Lopez last year. Take him out of the equation and they're even worse this year than they were last year despite the Lin and Booker additions.
I'm not terribly worried about the Nets being leaps and bounds better than last year. I think the issue is that now they are good enough that when good teams play down to them, they've got a chance. I think they would always have a chance against the other bottom feeders and it's a bit of a crapshoot as to whether the Sixers or Nets or Suns are going to win, but I think the Nets have a better chance (when healthy) of beating teams like us and the Bulls and Raptors than those other bottom feeding teams.
If all goes well for them I think our pick could end up in the 8-10 range. That would mean no injuries more severe than what Lin just went down with (1-2 weeks), no Lopez trade and no terribly cold stretches where Lin/Lopez/Bogs/Booker stink it up.
If all goes poorly, they're still in contention for the most ping pong balls. Lin or Lopez go down and I think that could seal their fate as a bottom 3 team.
If they fall somewhere in the middle I think we're looking at 3rd to 6th most ping pong balls. Same as last year where they are in the hunt for a top 3 finish, but some teams manage to tank below them to snag 4/5 potentially.
We should all just be happy it's supposed to be a deep draft in the top 10. We should be sitting pretty regardless.
Lopez was shut down for the final 5 games of last year when he was healthy, so there's the argument that Nets could had won maybe a few more games if he had played these games and remember that Jarret Jack suffered a season-ending injury by midway through the season, so Brooklyn was weakened by having their starting PG miss half of last season...I'm not a fan of Jack, but he was clearly better than his replacement which made the Nets worse.
So Lin being an upgrade to Jarrett Jack who missed half of last year games, one can come to conclusion that last year 21 wins team was well-below what they should had won if only Jarrett Jack hadn't gotten hurt and missed so many games...Lin may be worth, at the very least 10 additional wins since he's better than Jack.
So, at the very least, I see this Brooklyn team winning 30-35 wins...I know that may sound laughable to you guys, but my early observation are very positives and they've been in every games so far, with the exception being the Bulls game.
Lin, in 6 games, is definitely an upgrade on Jack and Booker has been great at rebounder and defense....Bojan Bogdanovic is also doing well scoring 15ppg....Nets also currently have a top 5 scoring bench unit, which is also surprising...Kilpatrick and Hamilton has looked good so far, coming off the bench and scoring the basket.
So if that holds, I have no doubt they will be a much improved team.
