Nets/Celtics futures intertwined

The worse they are the better we will be:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/24/sports/basketball/owners-grandstanding-confronts-nets-with-a-dim-future.html

The Nets tried. They really did.

They crossed the river and hit the ground bragging. They came to New York with high-minded intentions of taking ownership of it from the Knicks and walked the low road by placing a “Hear Ye” mural down the side of a building a few dribbles away from Madison Square Garden.

Their owner, Mikhail D. Prokhorov, handed over his checkbook to his general manager, Billy King, who seized the money and the moment to pursue deliverance of Prokhorov’s introductory 2010 promise of an N.B.A. championship “in one year minimum, and maximum in five years.”

The guarantee will expire this spring, with the underachieving Nets possibly excluded from the playoffs. As for city ownership, the Knicks are a joke but the Nets are the butt of it. Catastrophes are compelling. Moribund is monotonous.

At least through next season, the Nets appear to have exhausted potential avenues of dramatic improvement and, by extension, of leaving their footprint across the throat of the Knicks. But they tried. They really did. So give them an A for effort, a D for championship development, and then, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, recognize that it did not really have to play out this way.

The Nets did not have to be in the humbling position of battling for postseason survival with, among others, a Boston team they were battered by, 110-91, Monday night at Barclays Center, the very same Celtics who own a significant chunk of a future the Nets surrendered for the aforementioned (and failed) blitz of New York.

The all-out assault on the Knicks at the expense of young talent and draft picks was only an imperative that Prokhorov created, nothing that the Brooklyn market demanded. The Nets could easily have approached relocation as an expansion team with the understanding that they had history on their side, the return of a major professional sport to Brooklyn to sell, along with those sharp-looking T-shirts and jerseys

They had a sparkling new arena, with the greatest teams and players on earth scheduled to visit and at least couple of years to just deal with the followers of those opponents showing up in multitudes. After so much invested, so much lost, that has still been the case, which means that the Nets tried too hard to impress a fan base that really did not exist.

This all started with the February 2011 acquisition of Deron Williams from Utah, the headline-grabber soon after they had lost out on Carmelo Anthony, who went to the Knicks.

“I look at it as we’ve just acquired a player that’s going to be a cornerstone of our franchise for a long time,” King said then.

Long before anyone discovered that Williams was more of a boulder around their necks, the Nets — still a very bad team — had to persuade him to join them in Brooklyn and not to go elsewhere as a free agent. To do so, King made a most regrettable trade — a 2012 first-round pick (No. 6 over all) for a journeyman forward, Gerald Wallace.

Then came the bloated contract of Joe Johnson and, finally, three more first-round picks (plus the right to swap another) to the Celtics for the brief and unremarkable additions of Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett. For all of it, the Nets have one playoff series victory to show, while the assets surrendered now parade back into Brooklyn for an occasional and painful visit.

Lost to the Williams deal, power forward Derrick Favors torched the Nets for 22 points and 8 rebounds in a Utah victory at Barclays earlier this month. Drafted by Utah with a Nets pick, center Enes Kanter has been posting impressive numbers at his new home in Oklahoma City.

Chosen with the gift sent to Portland for Wallace, Damian Lillard will bring his electric point-guard skills to Barclays on April 6. Two nights later, Atlanta’s conference-leading Hawks will come to remind the Nets that their 2015 first-round potential lottery pick can be swapped, courtesy of the Johnson deal.

Who knows which players the Nets would have taken had they retained their picks? Who knows what the future picks — especially those belonging to the Celtics — will become? But if the Nets have any clear mandate over the next couple of years, even as major salary cap relief becomes available, it is to avoid bottoming out, especially to reduce the odds that Boston will cash in and possibly launch a new dynasty on Brooklyn’s back.

Pierce and Garnett are gone. To make it symbolically worse, Wallace, thrown into that deal, remains a Celtic, praised by Coach Brad Stevens on Monday night for recent contributions off the bench. “You need a guy to go in there, to say, ‘This is a big moment, and I’ve been there before,’ ” Stevens said.

Who is mostly to blame for where the Nets are right now, and where they clearly won’t be going? King, an employee, is the most vulnerable, but the blueprint clearly came from the grandstanding Prokhorov.

Remember when the New Orleans franchise was a temporary ward of the league in 2011 and then-Commissioner David Stern annulled the dealing of Chris Paul to the Lakers, explaining that it did not provide for the needs of a team badly in need of a long-term plan?

Too bad Stern was not advising the Nets when Prokhorov arrived from Russia. New Orleans is a talented young team on the rise. Though not without talent, the Nets are a baffling bunch with an uncertain future, from ownership on down.

Just recently, Brett Yormark, the team’s chief executive officer, told a sports symposium: “I want to own this city. That’s critical for us. I think the way you own it is by winning and getting to the playoffs this year.”

Good luck with that tired line. The Nets tried. They really did. But they failed, and it’s time for a retrenchment, a Plan B, just start worrying about themselves, along with their borough. Owning Brooklyn will be a feat in itself.

Again, no sympathy for the Nets from my house, and best of luck to the Celtics as they use all of the draft picks obtained from the Nets.