It’s ‘show me’ time for Nets in 2018-19

Wins and losses will eventually trump development for Brooklyn

April 17, 2018 By John Torenli, Sports Editor Brooklyn Daily Eagle

General manager Sean Marks and head coach Kenny Atkinson have remained true to their vision of building a winning culture here in Brooklyn. But when will the Nets begin winning during their respective tenures? AP Photo by Kathy Willens

Share this:

In his first two seasons, Kenny Atkinson has more than lived up to his reputation as one of the best player-development gurus in the NBA.

Spencer Dinwiddie, Caris LeVert, Joe Harris, Rondae Hollis-Jefferson and rookie Jarrett Allen have all grown exponentially under the guidance of the tireless and determined Nets head coach.

General manager Sean Marks, who has been at the helm since Feb. 18, 2016, has proven that he can get Atkinson the players he needs to build a solid foundation in Brooklyn, despite having to wait until the summer of 2019 to control his own first-round draft pick.

He has scoured the D-League, free agency and made significant draft moves and in-season trades to pick up solid contributors and potential future stars, ranging from Laker outcast D’Angelo Russell to stalwart veteran forward DeMarre Carroll and sharp-shooter Allen Crabbe.

But at some point in the very near future, the Nets will have to stop pointing to how well they are building and developing and actually begin winning and seriously competing for an Eastern Conference playoff spot.

That’s something that has been well out of their reach in each of the previous three seasons, including a combined record of 48-117 under the duo of Atkinson and Marks during the past two years.

“We already know we have an ownership group that is ready to fork out the big money when that timing is right,” Marks saidMonday during his season-ending press conference, alluding to the Nets’ new minority owner, billionaire Joseph Tsai, who officially bought in for 49 percent of Mikhail Prokhorov’s stake in the team last week.

“I think if we skip steps and think we can do it right now or we could’ve done it a year ago, that’s when franchises end up digging themselves into a hole,” Marks added. “They lose the flexibility in which to build and win with.”

The Nets’ organization learned this lesson all too well in the summer of 2013, when then-general manager Billy King gave away a slew of first-round picks, including one this coming June, to Boston for future Hall of Famers Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce in the hopes of delivering Brooklyn an NBA title.

Pierce and Garnett combined to help the Nets get one playoff series win, a thrilling seven-game stunner over Toronto in 2014, but Brooklyn’s NBA franchise nosedived thereafter, going 38-44 in 2014-15, 21-61 in 2015-16, a league-worst 20-62 in 2016-17 and 28-54 this past season.

Though the eight-game improvement in the win column was tied for second-best in the East, it didn’t inspire our borough’s basketball fanatics to pile into Barclays Center as they had during the team’s first three seasons here, each of which ended with a playoff appearance.

After averaging approximately 17,000 per night during their initial foray into Brooklyn, the Nets finished near the bottom of the NBA attendance rankings in each of the last three seasons, including a second-to-last 15,556 fans per home contest last year.

While the hope of better days ahead may be inspiring to the true basketball aficionado, it doesn’t make for better numbers at the box office.

Winning does.

Whether it’s next season, or even the year after, Atkinson and Marks have to start building a legacy of winning, rather than just a legacy of building.

“We can look at the guys that made the commitment last offseason, and hopefully they saw the improvement in certain players,” Atkinson said of what he expects to be a second straight summer of vigorous workouts at the team’s practice facility in Sunset Park.

“Whether it’s D’Angelo or Jarrett or Allen, they’re going to say ‘Man, I’m going to buy into this.’ The proof will be in the pudding when we start next year’s preseason and we talk about the commitment and buy-in, but I expect full commitment.”

Thus far, Prokhorov has stayed true to his proclamation that he would be patient with the current Brooklyn brain trust, but will Tsai do the same when he takes over majority ownership at some point during the next several years?

Marks believes so.

“The fact that Joe saw something that he liked in Brooklyn, saw something that he liked with the Nets organization, I think there’ll be a great partnership between the two,” he noted.

“I think we’re very fortunate to have that amount of knowledge and that amount of commitment shown by two individuals — arguably either one could own a team outright if they wanted to.”

And either one could eventually grow tired of continually building toward something that never bears fruit, either in the win column or at the box office.

That’s why the 2018-19 season will be a critical one for Brooklyn, if only to build a bridge of trust between the front office and ownership that this boat is sailing in the right direction.

And not drifting aimlessly into the ocean.

“We’ve got to close games,” Carroll said, referring to the Nets’ penchant for suffering back-breaking losses, five of which occurred in overtime this past season.

“If we can do that, this thing can really take off.”

If not? Well, that will ultimately be up to Prokhorov and Tsai.

Nothing But Net: Marks addressed his two free agents, Harris and in-season acquisition Jahlil Okafor, during Monday’s presser. The team appears intent on keeping Harris, who has already intimated his desires to remain within the organization, whereas Okafor was never a good fit with Atkinson’s up-and-down, 3-point-shooting style. “Yeah, I have been in talks here, especially recently a lot with my agent and I have reiterated that I would like to be here and I told that to Kenny and Sean,” Harris revealed … Point guard Jeremy Lin, who was brought here on a three-year, $39 million deal in 2016, only to miss 127 games over his first two seasons due to a couple of catastrophic knee injuries, expects to be back and ready to go come Opening Night in 2018-19. “When I come back, one of the things I’m expecting of myself is to really be the captain of the defense,” Lin said last week. “I’m going to be talking non-stop, demanding a lot from the people around me, and they’re going to do the same back to me and we’re going to be a good defensive team.”