Part II of a series analyzing the Brooklyn Nets
Wilson Chandler’s isolation has seemed glaring, both at the beginning of the Nets’ season and again now — during what could be the end.
Chandler sat out nearly two months at the start of the season, serving an NBA suspension. Now with the league itself suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic — and the Nets self-isolating after four tested positive — he’s talked about how odd it feels being cut off.
“It wouldn’t be exactly right to say it feels like the offseason,” Chandler wrote in The Players’ Tribune. “It’s weird because … it’s like it’s the offseason, as far as our doing nothing. But mentally? It’s not the offseason because there’s so much going on with the virus.”
Chandler wrote as part of a new series appropriately called The Iso, with so many athletes going from spending more time around their teammates than their own families to suddenly keeping their distance from each other in a variety of ways.
After being told to self-quarantine, Chandler considered doing it back home in Michigan, but opted to stay in New York. And even after an incident with his building manager — told to stay out of the lobby — he tried to turn it into a positive, taking up meditation.
“Whatever you believe in, whatever your religion or spiritual beliefs, I think people need to double down right now on things like that, and look within,” Chandler wrote.
With all his newfound spare time, he’s filled it with meditation, reading, art and even playing — no, getting humiliated by — his 11-year-old daughter in Fortnite. But this isn’t the first time he was cut off from his Nets teammates this season.
After signing a one-year minimum $2.5 million deal in July, the very next month Chandler tested positive for PEDs, he was hit with a 25-game suspension. He didn’t suit up until Dec. 15, and that forced layoff — granted, of his own doing — clearly took a toll on his season.
Typically a low-volume, efficient role player who doesn’t create his own shot, Chandler was out of sync early. His Offensive Rating climbed every single month, from a horrid 92.3 in December to a solid 111.8 this month before play was suspended.
It’s no coincidence that as Chandler’s usage rate went down, both his plus-minus and Net Rating jumped from January to February, and again from February to this month. And he’d played his best basketball of the season right before the shutdown.
“He spaced the floor, made some good passes. But stuff like that doesn’t go on the stat sheet, the stuff he was doing, setting screens, running the floor hard,” Caris LeVert said. “He was huge for us.”
With Taurean Prince in a season-long shooting slump, Chandler finally started the last three games — Kenny Atkinson’s swan-song victory over the Spurs, and Jacque Vaughn-led wins against the Bulls and Lakers. Chandler was a plus-24 for his best three-game stretch of the season, much of it played alongside DeAndre Jordan.
“The combination of — analytically speaking — how [Jordan] and Wilson Chandler give us defensive rebounding, some presence at the rim, the combination of those two guys [helped],” Vaughn said.
When Kevin Durant returns and Nic Claxton develops, the Nets won’t have as much need for Chandler next season. That gives the pending free agent the rest of this season to shop his wares for 2020-21.