Was it worth it? Of course it was worth it. Nobody was hurt or maimed or destroyed by the $190 million that Mikhail Prokhorov invested in the 2013-14 Nets, least of all Prokhorov, whose relentlessly deep pockets conjure the wonderful line that Texas oil baron H. L. Hunt may or may not have uttered once upon a time.
Told that his son, Lamar, had lost $1 million thanks to his whimsical fantasy to invent a rival football league to the NFL, it is part of the sporting mythology that Hunt shrugged his shoulders, smiled, and said: “Certainly I’m worried. At that rate, Lamar will be broke in 250 years.”
So we can forget that aspect of it. Prokhorov himself, in a statement released a day after the Nets’ season ended at the hands of the Heat, said, “It made for a thrilling spring,” which probably means he has no regrets about the cost of fielding the most costly team in the history of professional basketball.
Worth it? Sure. The Nets are fighting for relevance. They play in a borough still deeply rooted in the enemy camp, the Knicks having a solid 65-year head start on them. They won a playoff series. They made the Heat sweat a little bit, even if they wound up only taking a game off them. If it’s hard to decipher just how many people are deeply invested in the Nets, they do fill a beautiful arena, and they turned it into a terrific home-court experience.
Worth it? Yes. Easy call. It was worth it.
But was this season a success? That’s a different question. And it merits a different answer.
No. No, it was not.
From the moment the Nets gathered at Duke University for training camp, there was one word that was never far away from anyone’s lips: championship. There was an urgency to what the Nets wanted. They had ransomed their future for right now, importing Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett, shedding future No. 1 picks in a win-now fit that would make the Knicks blush. To their credit, they never ran away from that as the goal.
And they wound up 11 wins shy. Which isn’t close at all.
It doesn’t matter that they played the Heat to the very end in half their losses in the Eastern Conference semifinals; that’s a loser’s lament. It doesn’t matter that they dug themselves brilliantly out of a 10-21 hole to give themselves a season, while the other guys in town just kept pouring gasoline on a dumpster fire.
And it doesn’t matter that Brook Lopez, around whom so much of the future depends, missed the final 4 ½ months of the season with a recurrence of his foot woes. The brutal fact is, the Nets played a lot better without him than they ever did with him, and Lopez, coach Jason Kidd and general manager Billy King each acknowledge it’s going to take some work to ensure that Lopez maximizes his talents in Kidd’s system.
“What good teams have is continuity,” King said. “That comes from playing with each other. We have a good core, and now we have to build on that core.”
That’s true. But so is this: This team wasn’t built with the deliberate patience of the Spurs or the Thunder or even the Heat, who are now in Year Four together. This was a gathering of transient talents hoping to capture a moment in time, forcing their way inside the window. The owner didn’t spend this kind of coin, and the GM didn’t ransom that much of the future, to build a “Nets Way.”
They did that to compete. Immediately. Before the window slams shut.
And this was their opportunity. The team will be different next year, will likely lose a key element in Shaun Livingston, could (and probably should, if not for the fact that all those traded No. 1s will look completely wasted) move on without Garnett and Pierce. They will remain competitive. They may never have as good a chance to make a run as they did this year.
Good for Prokhorov, and King, and Kidd, for going for it, for taking that shot. Better to act like the Yankees than the Mets. But here’s the thing: The Yankees will be the first to tell you that spending money is easy; maximizing it is hard. They do not soft-soap title-free seasons: those belong in the wood chipper of history.
And if you spend Yankees dollars, you’d better demand Yankees results. Five postseason wins when 16 are required? Not enough. Sorry. Not nearly enough.