When the season began, the Nets were widely expected to win the Atlantic Division and finish with a top-four seed in the Eastern Conference. Somehow, despite being under .500 as their season reached its halfway point with Friday’s 107-106 win over the Mavericks in Brooklyn, both goals remain firmly in reach.
That’s just one of many reasons this Nets season, easily the most anticipated in the franchise’s NBA history, already has become its strangest one. Though part of the reason the Nets still have a chance is the pathetic state of the Eastern Conference — just four teams are over .500 — it also is due to the fact the Nets in recent weeks finally have begun to look like the team they were expected to be when the season began.
Though Brook Lopez is out for the season, Deron Williams is back, and the Nets have been flying high in January, going 9-1 while employing a small lineup that has given life to Joe Johnson, Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett.
Here are three reasons for the Nets’ wildly up-and-down start to the season, which has them in seventh place in the Eastern Conference and within 2 ¹/₂ games behind Toronto for first place in the Atlantic Division:
1. Injuries galore
The Nets spent the offseason talking up their depth, and deservedly so after going into training camp with a roster that went legitimately 12 deep with quality veteran players. But no amount of depth could outweigh the loss of three of their top six players — Williams, Lopez and Andrei Kirilenko — for significant chunks of the first half, with the three of them missing a combined 66 games.
That, combined with having a rookie coach and adapting to a significantly reshaped roster, did not allow them to get on track immediately.
It’s not surprising this recent stretch of success is concurrent with a run of fairly good health and some consistency in the rotation.
2. Jason Kidd’s growing pains
When the Nets hired Kidd as coach just a couple of weeks after retiring from his 19-year career, it was expected there would be some growing pains. But it would have been hard for anyone to predict things would’ve been this interesting.
There was “Sodagate,” when he told Tyshawn Taylor to run into him in order to spill a soda on the floor and earn an extra timeout against the Lakers, and a $50,000 fine in the process. There was his decision to “re-assign” assistant coach Lawrence Frank a little over a month into the first season of a six-year contract. And there was the mess the Nets were through December.
But things have turned around since the calendar flipped to 2014. Now, Kidd is a front-runner for Eastern Conference Coach of the Month honors.
3. Kevin Garnett’s shooting swings
Garnett’s shooting percentage is a good indicator for Nets’ success. Through November and December, when Garnett looked like he was on his way out of the league, the future Hall of Famer shot just 36 percent.
But in January, Garnett’s play at both ends has been a big reason why the Nets have become one of the league’s hottest teams. He is shooting an absurd 68.4 percent in January.
Three things to watch for in the second half:
1. Deron Williams’ health
This season was supposed to be about Williams returning to elite status. Instead, once again his season has been waylaid by a series of ankle injuries.
He has played pretty well when healthy, averaging 13.4 points and 6.8 assists in 30 minutes a night while shooting 47 percent from the field and 39.5 percent from 3-point range. But the Nets didn’t sign Williams to a five-year max contract worth roughly $100 million to play pretty well. They signed him to be the face of the franchise and the engine that drives the team.
Given how weak the conference is, the third seed in the East — the place virtually everyone expected them to be when the season began — still is possible. That potentially would set up a showdown with the Heat in the conference semifinals. So Williams has time to turn things around, assuming he can stay on the court.
2. How long will “small ball” work?
When the Nets opted to go with a small lineup beginning in Oklahoma City on Jan. 2, it had the whiff of desperation for a team that had just gotten blown out in San Antonio and was heading into 2014 with a dismal 10-21 record.
Instead, it turned out to be a stroke of genius — having extra shooters to space the floor and more speed on the perimeter to allow for easier switching on defense. But does that strategy have a shelf life?
The same thing could be said for Kevin Garnett, who has benefitted from moving to center this season — just like he did in Boston a year ago. They likely need him to remain near his current level to keep this up the rest of the way.
3. How will they survive the circus trip?
After the Nets play the Bobcats in Brooklyn on Feb. 12, they won’t play another home game until March 3 against the Bulls. They hit the road for seven games over that stretch, including a six-game, two-week West Coast trip that comes after the All-Star break. It’s a stretch that features several winnable games — Bulls, Jazz, Lakers, Nuggets and Bucks — as well as a pair of very tough games at the Warriors and Trail Blazers.
If the Nets can survive through that trip, they will put themselves in good shape for a stretch run. They play 14 of their last 25 games at home and will have just two games outside the Eastern time zone over the final six weeks of the regular season.