The Nets are a team that has spent the past five years chasing stars under the ownership of Mikhail Prokhorov. They have landed some — Deron Williams, Joe Johnson, Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce — and developed a top player in Brook Lopez, but haven’t come close to garnering the success they hoped.
The Nets come into this season knowing they don’t have the firepower to compete night-in and night-out with the top teams in the league. So how does coach Lionel Hollins plan to match up with his opponents? By making life as difficult as possible for them.
“You just go out and play and compete,” he said after Thursday’s practice at the team’s New Jersey facility. “Compete every time you’re on the court. You play fresh. You play hard. … There’s been great players in the league forever. I played with great players, I played against great players, and you just go out and compete and be great. That’s the key.
“Be aggressive, and make the other team be better. You can’t come out at [half speed] and beat us. You have to come out here and be at your best and beat us. That’s what you are trying to convince your team to do [as a coach].”
Coaching these Nets won’t be easy. The team is trying to navigate a tricky balance: trying to avoid letting the draft pick they owe Boston (as part of the Pierce and Garnett trade two years ago) become a top pick, while beginning to develop the younger players on the roster to create a foundation for future success.
Sure, the Nets will have Lopez and Thaddeus Young — both 27 — to build around, but after that they have a 34-year-old Joe Johnson and plenty of question marks.
Unless Lopez takes an unexpected leap forward, becoming a top 10-to-15 player in the league, the Nets don’t have the game-changing talent that guarantees success. That makes it difficult for Hollins to make this group fit together in a way that will lead to wins.
“If I had my vision, I would sit on the bench and watch five All-Stars take on another team’s All-Stars and just see who comes out on top,” Hollins said with a smile.
“[This league is] personnel driven. I’m sure whoever coaches LeBron James coaches a little bit less because of LeBron James. Kobe Bryant, Chris Paul, Tim Duncan, all the great, great players, they make coaches smarter coaches, better coaches, because they understand, they compete on a different level, they work on a different level, and they have the ability to do things most people can’t do.”
The Nets don’t have one of those players, so they instead will hope the framework Hollins can create around Lopez and Young will be enough to survive a daunting early-season schedule and make a run at a playoff berth most outsiders don’t see as plausible. They play the Spurs, Grizzlies, Rockets, Warriors, Cavaliers and Thunder on the road in the first month with 13 of their first 16 games against playoff teams.
The Nets open the season next Wednesday at home against the Bulls with a likely starting lineup of Lopez, Young, Johnson, Wayne Ellington, and Jarrett Jack. Hollins said Thursday he knew what his starting lineup would be, but wasn’t feeling charitable enough to share it.
Ellington started the last four preseason games, including the two after Bojan Bogdanovic returned from sitting with a sore right ankle, then didn’t play in Monday’s preseason finale in Boston, where the starters sat while Bogdanovic played 40 minutes.
Whether Ellington or Bogdanovic starts, both are expected to get significant minutes at shooting guard and could split the 48 minutes — as they did in Sunday’s game against the 76ers.
“I’m ready,” Ellington said. “I feel like guys really respect me from the perimeter. [Lopez and Young] need room in there to work, and in order to have that room you need to have guys who have respect for their ability from the perimeter. So when they get double-teamed and [defenses] collapse, you have to have guys who can make teams pay for that, and I think that’s exactly where I fit in. ”