There is no team in American sports right now with worse vibes than the Nets.
It’s not just the 11 straight losses (six of which came by double digits) or Kyrie Irving’s continued part-time absence, it’s also a general malaise hanging over Barclays Center, providing an added layer of unshakable February coldness.
The losses are piling up, the team is basically different every single week, and one of the men tasked with fixing things has not played in an NBA game since he was spooked out of an open dunk in Game 7 of last year’s Eastern Conference semifinals.
Ben Simmons was present at Nets’ shootaround on Monday morning but did not do anything on the court, providing a physical reminder of just how far off the rails this season has gone. Monday night’s affair with Sacramento will be yet another in the long line of games without Irving, Kevin Durant and James Harden, a trio now relegated to the great what if section of NBA history.
With Irving essentially banned from the building, Durant still dealing with his MCL sprain and James Harden now in Philadelphia, the Nets are grasping at any straws that could be twisted and bent into a happy shape.
“We’re just all trying to stay positive,” Cam Thomas said after shootaround. “We had a good stretch in Miami that we want to keep building off of, down by 20, came back, and had a chance to win at the end. We want to stay as positive as we can because we know things are going to turn around eventually. The key is to stay positive.”
As the roster itself transforms into something new every day, the rookie experiencing all of this for the first time — and at an extremely unprecedented level, no less — is trying his best to ignore the hoopla.
“When I leave the facility, I don’t try to look too much into the media,” Thomas said. “I do what I love to do and don’t look too much at what people say about us.”
Stress relief looks different for everybody, but the fresh-faced 20-year-old finds his comfortable detachment in video games.
“I game,” he smiled. “I be gaming with some dudes on the team.”
In addition to Simmons, whose highly-anticipated season debut feels slated for after the All-Star break, Seth Curry and Andre Drummond are also now in the fray. Thomas, who said he just met Simmons for the first time and got to know Curry and Drummond a little bit while they were in Miami with the team, is thrilled about the idea of adding guys who are committed to the Nets.
“I think we have really good guys who want to be here,” Thomas stated. “That helps us have a better vibe amongst each other. It’s a step in the right direction.”
Any sort of victory, be it by one point over an equally miserable team or a cathartic blowout, is a sizable step in the right direction. Nic Claxton is drinking the positivity Kool-Aid as well. The big man offered his ideas for what the team could look like now that Harden is out and Simmons is eventually taking the reins.
“I think we’ll be able to play really fast and get out in transition,” Claxton predicted. “We’ll definitely be able to switch a lot on defense. I think it’s going to be a lot of fun.”
Fun has not been a word often used to describe this team. The great shakeup at the trade deadline came, in some part, because Harden was seemingly not having any fun at all. Philadelphia fans will tell you that watching Simmons and his reluctance to shoot has been anything but fun, and it’s hard to imagine that he’ll drastically change his ways now. Of course, nobody understands the ins and outs of this mess more than the people who are in the building every day.
Now in his third season with the team — a lifetime ago in Net years — Claxton has some experience dealing with turmoil. His first year ended with the Nets getting swept out of the bubble by Toronto, then the Steve Nash era began one year later, and now he’s playing with a group that’s completely unrecognizable than it was when he was drafted.
“When you go through things like this you can either fall or you can get closer together,” Claxton offered. “I think we just gotta mesh. The vibes have been better. Everybody settled in after the deadline, even myself.”
With more time in the league comes more knowledge of how the deadline works, though. This time around, the center says, it was scary.
“I didn’t really know what was going to happen,” Claxton shared. “The NBA is a business. I thought there was a possibility that I was getting moved. It was a rollercoaster. I’m happy that I’m still here.”
Happy is a relative term around these parts. Eighth in the Eastern Conference entering play on Monday, losers of 11 straight, and now with the NBA’s biggest question mark replacing one of its greatest scorers ever, the vibes could be in for another cataclysmic setback.
