With a win over the San Antonio Spurs on March 29, 2010, the New Jersey nets avoided becoming the second team to fail to win 10 games in an 82-game NBA season. The Nets flirted with the pace of the 1972-73 Philadelphia 76ers, who ended up winning a mere nine games that season, throughout the year, until a recent stretch in which they won three of four and wiggled their way out of the back pages of the record books. One might assume that a franchise that flirted with such a record would be in dire straits, but I don’t believe this to be the case with the Nets. Yes, the team struggled mightily this season, but I think this is an organization with a bright future.
There are several reasons why I think that New Jersey Nets tickets will be increasingly popular in the coming seasons. The first is the young talent that this team boasts. Brook Lopez is already one of the best centers in the Eastern Conference at 21 years of age. He’s averaging 19 points and nine rebounds per game this season and chipping in nearly two blocks a night as well. He’s quite the offensive talent, both in the low post and in the mid-range game. He’s also proven to be a lot tougher down low than initially expected. Lopez projects to be one of the best centers in the league for the next decade or so, and that’s a good place for a franchise to start.
The team has another talented youngster in Courtney Lee. Lee has had his ups and downs this season, as well as his fair share of injuries, but I’m still fairly confident that he can develop into a quality starter in the pros. Lee is averaging 12 points, three rebounds and two assists on the season, as well as more than a steal per game. His offensive game has shown a lot of promise, but night-to-night consistency is what he truly needs to work on. He’s capable of becoming an elite perimeter defender and could become a solid third option on a playoff team.
While Lopez and Lee are the two players that I think have the most security as far as remaining with the team is concerned, Devin Harris could also fall into that category. Harris set the league on fire last season, averaging 21 points, three boards and seven assists in his first full year with the team. He’s struggled in 2009-10, though, shooting less than 40 percent from the field and less than 30 percent from three.
Last season he looked like a star in the making; this season he appears to be better-suited as a complementary player. Next season will probably determine what direction his career truly takes, but it’s no guarantee that he’ll be wearing a Nets uniform in 2010-11. The Nets were rumored to have shopped Harris around the trade deadline, though no deal was struck. If New Jersey lands the number one pick in the 2010 NBA Draft, it’s all but assured they’ll select John Wall and look to move Harris in the offseason.
That brings me to another thing I like about the team; they’re going to have the best shot at landing John Wall. Though I’m not quite as sold on him as most people seem to be, Wall is considered to be a franchise-altering pro prospect, drawing comparisons to Chicago Bulls point guard Derrick Rose. A lot of scouts think he has even more potential than Rose, which tells you how highly they think of him. If the Nets landed Wall, they’d be building around him, Lopez, Lee and whatever package they could get in return for Harris, which would likely be at least one player of note. That’s a pretty solid foundation for a team that was just purchased by a new, exciting owner and could be on its way to a bigger market, not to mention all of the salary cap space the team will have.
They’ll likely finish the 2009-10 season with one of the worst records in the history of the NBA, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that all hope is lost for the Nets. This team has young talent, an upcoming lottery pick and a new owner that will look to inject some life into the organization. The Nets may have bottomed out this season, but that means that they have nowhere to go but up.
