The second half of the Nets season is here, and even though the Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving era came to a screeching and unceremonious halt, the goal remains the same in Brooklyn.
Winning a championship.
SIKE. Championship dreams are thing of the past.
The true goal entering the second half of the Nets season is to stay afloat long enough to salvage what was once a season with championship expectations.
Nets GM Sean Marks said the goal is that this roster constructed on the fly continues to qualify for the playoffs even after the franchise pressed the big red button midseason.
Are the playoffs still possible in Brooklyn? Anything can happen, though it’s far more difficult to pen the Nets in now that Durant and Irving are out of town.
STANDINGS CHECK
The Boston Celtics and Milwaukee Bucks remain the cream of the Eastern Conference crop. The Philadelphia 76ers and Cleveland Cavaliers are a tier below: They are legitimate contenders who would need to get very lucky to win a series against either the Celtics or Bucks.
And then there are the Nets, who entered the New Year 25-12 with the East’s No. 2 seed but are now clinging onto the fifth seed for dear life.
The Nets have lost four of their last six games. They are two games ahead of the sixth-seeded Knicks and 2.5 games ahead of the No. 7 Miami Heat.
In other words, the Nets are one bad stretch away from falling to seventh place, where playoffs are no longer a certainty and a team has to play sudden-death basketball in the Play-In Tournament to qualify for the post season as a seventh or eighth seed.
That could be a problem, because even though their records are terrible, teams like the Hawks (Trae Young), Wizards (Bradley Beal, Kyle Kuzma, Kristaps Porzingis), Raptors (Pascal Siakam, Fred VanVleet), and Chicago Bulls (DeMar DeRozan, Zach LaVine) are each playing below their means and have the star-level players needed to win high-pressure games down the stretch.
The Nets have Mikal Bridges, Spencer Dinwiddie, Cam Thomas and a ton of three-and-D wings. Can that win you a game with the playoffs on the line?
SCHEDULE
The Nets will also pick up where they left off: With the seventh-toughest remaining schedule in all of basketball, according to Tankathon.
The Nets have 24 games left in their sprint to the playoffs. Of those 24 games, 16 are against teams that would qualify for the playoffs or the Play-In Tournament if it started today.
Of those 16 games, eight (Bucks twice, Nuggets twice, Cavs twice, Celtics once, Sixers once) are against legitimate championship contenders. The other eight include two matchups against Trae Young’s Atlanta Hawks, two games against the Minnesota Timberwolves and matchups against the Sacramento Kings and Oklahoma City Thunder.
The Nets also play the Bulls, who currently would not qualify for the Play-In as the 11th seed, but Chicago can be a challenge on any given night given both Zach LaVine and DeMar DeRozan are on the roster. The remaining schedule includes games against Orlando Magic twice, the Detroit Pistons once, and the Utah Jazz once.
It will take something close to or even above.500 basketball for the Nets to avoid the Play-In Tournament while other teams attempt to floor-it up the Eastern Conference standings.
Can the Nets stay afloat now that they’ve ripped off their life vest and tossed it out West? That will largely hinge on this team’s ability to get a basket in crunch time.
