The Nets aren’t in the most enviable of positions. Sitting at 0-7 without a first-round pick in next June’s draft and a brutal stretch ahead that includes road games in Houston, Golden State, Oklahoma City and Cleveland, it looks like things are going to get worse before they get better.
But Billy King said despite the rocky start, and despite the fact the team won’t benefit from a disastrous regular season like their rivals across the East River did last year, he won’t be making any short-sighted, panic moves. The Nets general manager said he won’t try to salvage a respectable finish at the expense of the team’s projected $40 million or so in cap space and the young players it does have.
“We can trade now and eat all that space up, get to 30-something wins and make the playoffs in the eighth spot,” King said at the team’s New Jersey practice facility Monday afternoon. “[But] then, where’s the future now? So it’s about adding the right pieces and being patient.
“We didn’t get here overnight, and we are not going to get out of it overnight. That’s reality. There is not something where it’s, ‘OK, this is the magic wand and we are going to do this and it’s going to change overnight. We knew that going in, we knew that when we made those decisions and it didn’t work, and so now we’ve got to gradually, systematically dig yourself out of it.”
While King said he’s made some “exploratory calls” about trades, the message he gave repeatedly during his 15-minute sitdown with reporters was the Nets won’t be making any drastic moves.
Everyone around the team knew it would be a tough opening month, but no one thought it would be this bad — even after the Nets decided to move on from Deron Williams this summer and cut salary to get under the luxury tax for the first time since 2012.
And, in some ways, the 0-7 record doesn’t fully describe just how bad they’ve been. Through those opening seven games, the Nets have been outscored by an average of more than 12 points per game — the worst in the NBA — and are easily the worst 3-point shooting team, averaging 23.6 percent on 15 attempts per game.
That’s left them with very little margin for error, and while they’ve hung around in several of their losses fairly deep into the second half, the Nets seem to have a six-to-eight minute stretch each game where they fall apart and allow their opponent to put the game away.
“We’re in this together,” said King, who insisted coach Lionel Hollins’ job is under no threat. “This is not on one person. We’ve got to figure it out amongst ourselves — players, coaches, management — and dig ourselves out of this hole.
“We knew the schedule was going to be tough, but that’s not an excuse. We can’t use that as a crutch and say well we’ve played all these playoff teams because we’ve been in games … it isn’t like we’re getting blown out.
“The end result may end up at [12 or 14], but we’ve been up late in games, tied, and we haven’t made the right plays individually to win these games. That’s the thing. We’ve got to execute down the stretch because we don’t have a lot room for error.”
They certainly don’t. The Nets haven’t gotten good enough play from their replacements for Williams — Jarrett Jack and Shane Larkin — something King acknowledged, and their shooting struggles have allowed teams to double Brook Lopez and Joe Johnson without consequences.
That’s left the Nets as one of three teams without a win, with no obvious answer for where the first one will come from. But, at least to this point, King and Co. are still stressing patience, and not deviating from a plan that could bring them plenty of pain in the short-term but at least provides the possibility of a long-term solution.
“You’ve just got to be patient,” King said. “I live in Brooklyn, so it’s not something I enjoy, the fact that we are 0-7. But it’s about having confidence that we’ve got to ride ourselves through it.”
So far that ride has been a bumpy one — and it doesn’t look like that’s going to change anytime soon.