The Brooklyn Nets’ New Search For Normalcy

The clock marks 8:58 left in the third quarter, and Brooklyn leads Milwaukee by 10. It’s only game number four of the NBA season for the Brooklyn Nets, but it feels a bit bigger. Drop one more and it’s going to start to feel like Nash could be out the door before good ole Thanksgiving. Not to mention it’s the Bucks they’re up against. Everyone’s pre-season darlings to come out of the Eastern Conference. A true test. And the team Brooklyn faced in the best “foot on the line” game in NBA history, a game that also coincidentally marks the last time the Nets were thought of as a somewhat normal NBA franchise. The Nets don’t get to be normal now though. Even up 10 in the third quarter as Kevin Durant grabs a wayward Giannis Antetokounmpo three pointer and glides up the right wing they don’t get to be normal. 

A jogging Kyrie splits a few aimless Buck defenders attempting to flee back in transition and Durant chests him the ball yards behind the center of the three point arc. He puts on a slippery dive into a backpedaling George Hill reaching the paint. The ever so menacing Antetokounmpo is waiting for him though, and Kyrie instinctively drops the ball to a suddenly free Simmons, open above the block. Simmons isn’t ready for the pass though, and instead he fumbles it. And from the baseline an eager Kyrie shouts.

“Shoot it, Ben!”

Mike Breen: “Simmons…… didn’t even look at the basket.”

Simmons regains control, and kicks the ball out to an open Durant who pump fakes a closeout and rims a mid range J home at the foul line. 62-50 Nets.

Jeff Van Gundy: “I thought he should have looked at the basket. I thought it was an opportunity for him to get a layup but Durant got a friendly roll again.”

From that point on everything went haywire for the Nets. A forgettable first half for Giannis ballooned into a 17 point quarter as the Bucks bullied their way back into the game, punishing the Nets in the painted area time after time. It only took three minutes for the Bucks to erase the 12 point gap and get back into the game. And to ice the cake, three minutes later in a fit of bug eyed rage head coach Steve Nash found himself picking up a technical, only to be ejected moments later.  

It’s the kind of sequence that exemplifies the Nets rocky three year run so far. A glimmer of cautionary optimism followed by mechanical failure. After their loss in Milwaukee the Nets sit at an unsurprising 1-3 record. It’s not so bad. But with every loss they’re one day closer to being mentioned as one of the biggest basketball disasters of all time. And the Simmons media buffet is ratcheting up to an 8 on the Westbrookian scale of “can you believe how bad this guy looks out there?” 

Since that fateful “toe on the line” game the Nets quest for NBA supremacy has gone awry over and over again. Even last year’s promising 36-19 record with Kevin Durant in the lineup seems light years away from where they are now. If they ever had any benefit of doubt, it’s completely run its course. If you were to rank your top “what the fuck is happening?” Nets moments over the last 3 years what would you even start with? The Harden trade? The second Harden trade? The antivax movement? I’m not so sure. That’s why I made this list:

My top “What fuck is happening with the Nets?” moments that caused me to lose faith in them

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1. KD asking for Nash and Sean Mark’s head.
2. KD’s trade request.
3. New York Law and Kyrie’s Vaccination Status. 
4. Signing Kyrie.
5. Kyrie’s post postseason presser where he declared he would be managing the franchise with owner Joe Tsai, GM Sean Marks and KD. 
6. The Simmons Trade (They kind had to do it though, right? Refer to #8. )
7. KD decides he doesn’t want everyone fired or to be traded and is cool with everything going forward. Yup, sounds like everything’s dandy. 
8. That 0-11 Stretch in 2022 while KD was hurt and Harden was out of shape and awful. Also could be referred to as the stretch when Harden officially quit on the team.
9. The Harden Trade.
10. Firing Kenny Atkinson. 

The only cure for Brooklyn is to win basketball games, something they’ve struggled to do since starting last season 29-16. Only now, their quest for normalcy relies on the most un-normal of players. The season is young, of course, and it’s a small sample size but the Simmons, Durant, Irving Nets currently rank 29th in net rating so far. They’re getting absolutely killed on the boards allowing a whopping 18.5 second chance points per game, and in the paint where they’ve allowed 53.5 points per game. Both figures rank in the latter half of the league. 

And yet somehow it’s the offense that has completely underwhelmed over the first four matches. An ugly 31% from three may be due for a correction, and Seth Curry’s eventual return should help. But the truth of the problem lies in Simmons’ minutes. With Simmons off the floor, the Nets have a 122.4 offensive rating, a rating that would rank 2nd best in the league just behind Dallas at 122.6. When he’s on the floor they’re a little more than 18 points worse, a truly awful number that would rank just above the struggling Clippers for 28th best.

It’s not all been bad for Simmons. His defense is coming along. He looked a much more active against Milwaukee, despite getting bulldozed by a few Giannis drives. He’s averaging about his career average in assists too. It’s clear his court vision hasn’t been undone by whatever physically and/or mentally paused his return to basketball actives last year. It’s nice to see him handle the ball and push up court, drifting and finding open shooters on breaks like a mailman dishing out the Sunday paper.  But as it has been for Simmons’ entire career, it’s his unwillingness to face the mean bulldog guarding the lawn that will ultimately define him and the Nets season. 

Imagine this: In a professional basketball game Ben Simmons sees a wall of defenders on the break, takes one pause to scope his surroundings, and then makes a charging drive into traffic. He speeds by one defender and then using his body KO’s another. Two dribbles. Slam dunk. Two points.

It’s the kind of aggressive move that has all but evaded Simmons so far in his Brooklyn tenure. In 2022 Simmons is averaging a measly 5.3 PPG which if sustained would give him the worst scoring average of his career nearly three times over. Not to mention, his 2.3 FTA per game would be less than half his career average. He’s only attempting five shots a game for christ sake! Again that would cut his previous career low in half! 

There’s a lot of time left, as the early season saying goes. And Simmons is clearly still finding his footing after a long absence. That’s to be expected. What comes next is more important though. If there is one truth that can be taken away from the first four games of the Nets season it’s this: the Nets won’t find themselves unless Simmons does. And maybe that was obvious before the get go, but it feels a bit more real now that we’ve seen it get actual court time together.

Juxtapose the Simmons conundrum with the way the Giannis handled Wednesday night. After a very passive first half in which the supposed best player in the world plunked four mid range jumpers and two three pointers on his way to 9 points, Giannis turned himself into the reincarnation of vengeance, thundering his way to 34 second half points and the victory. Over and over again he attacked the Brooklyn back line of defense. After the game, he said this:

“I’ve been working a lot over these few years and this summer and just so anxious to prove to myself that I can do what I’ve been working on, and sometimes I think I play not (to) my strength as much. I kind of scratched that, and in the second half, I was just, ‘OK, I’m going to be myself and be OK with it’ and just tried to drive as much as I can and find my teammates and get in the paint.”

Now that’s mantra worthy! Meanwhile, at the very same scorer’s table Ben Simmons failed to record a single shot attempt in half number two. Is Ben Simmons okay with being his basketball self anymore? Because that’s what the Nets need from him to right this ship. They need a paint attacking distributor who plays All-NBA level defense. KD knows it. Kyrie knows it. “He’s a basketball player, he’s a professional, he has the skills to be a great professional, he’s done it in the past.” said Kyrie post loss.

But as it always is with the Nets, the theoretical never seems to parallel the actual. The gap between great and the “could be” great has never felt wider than this moment in their short history. Will the Nets and Simmons ever be able to make it a reality? Will they will it into existence like the Eastern Conference foe they shared the court with Wednesday?

I don’t know. Simmons will never be Giannis. He’s not going to destroy teams for 40 minutes a night, be an MVP, or make dad jokes. But if he can copy cat Giannis’ “be myself” mantra he may yet have a chance to right his ship, and in turn the Nets’ ship. Otherwise the Brooklyn experiment might be at a dead end. And the Simmons escapade will be the final dagger, in the last act, for a team that once seemed destined for year in year out finals contention. Only time will tell.