Dealing with PTKS (Post Traumatic Knick Syndrome) …It’s not that bad here

When I woke up on the morning of Thursday, June 11, I was not in the best mood I’ve ever experienced. Nope. These finals games for an East Coaster with an earlier bedtime are tough, and when they go down to the wire and my heart is racing at midnight and I’m looking at maybe a 1.00 a.m. sleep time if I’m lucky. When the games end in a devastating and quite frankly borderline embarrassing loss for the team you would like to see win at the hands of the team you absolutely would not like to see win, it’s even worse.

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The last few weeks being a Nets fan who lives in Brooklyn has not been the most fun I’ve ever experienced either. You know why. The city worked up into a frenzy over the other team, their merch everywhere, not a drop of news on our front for weeks other than what seemed like a nice vacation that MPJ took with the boys and vague, unverifiable and very perishable draft rumors. Yuck.

So I woke up cranky. On the phone with my girlfriend I told her I was in my “Quarterly Bad Mood”. I received texts about the Nets moving back to New Jersey, etc. I continue to get asked by people I do or don’t know very well, “who I’m rooting for”(???).

Then, amidst all this, on my commute to the office, the subway doors opened and looking right at me in the little area between the seats was a tall, older gentleman, maybe in his 60’s, proudly wearing a crisp, white flat-brimmed Brooklyn Nets cap! Mood completely flipped! So, I get off that subway and call my friend Drew who is also (albeit much more casually) a Nets fan and elatedly declare us “So Back!!.” The power of seeing someone else displaying their allegiance on the morning I was feeling so down about my team turned it all around. I kid you not I ordered a Nets cap shortly thereafter. The day had brightened. Hope was not lost. It was found again in the dank air of subway tunnel.

To be a fan of this team has not been and will never be for the faint of heart. We are cursed so uniquely with bad luck that I don’t think we have any rivals in that specific category. We aren’t the Kings, a poorly run franchise who can’t get out of their own way for anything. We don’t quite feel like the Mets, cursed with something deeper, darker, more twisted than any mortal minds can fully comprehend. We are just a franchise for whom nothing seems to go right. KD’s foot, draft lottery luck, COVID vaccination policies, Ben Simmons yips, the list goes on.

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But bizarrely, against all odds, where we sit right now as I am typing this all out, I actually feel… pretty good? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t begrudge anyone an ounce of frustration about how the last six years have gone, I am not here to preach. You can be mad that your basketball team is bad. The point of the sport is to be good. But I would argue that for me and my journey with this team, the ideal would be having a team that is good for a prolonged period of time in a way that feels exciting and sustainable. And we are slowly but surely tracking towards that place. Plus, I’m just not prone to pessimism or complaining! See again: “Quarterly Bad Mood”. And I understand why many, many, many Nets fans seem to be in a bad place right now, but may I suggest… A little bit of a step back and a deep breath to go along with it?

Let’s break this down because I feel like there are a few misconceptions about some things or different angles at which to view situations that I’d like to present, starting with…

The Five (Former) Rookies

If I hear one more basketball pundit on a podcast where they are paid to know about and talk about and opine about basketball chortle as they refer to the Nets as having drafted “Five Point Guards” I am going to combust. Egor is a playmaking wing. Traore is a point guard. Powell is a 3-and-D wing. Saraf is maybe kind of a point guard, more likely a bit of a combo guard. And for God’s sake, Wolf is a nearly 7-foot tall forward who can also pass and shoot a little bit for a guy his size. Let’s take a look at that again… Ok one…. One and a half….. Ok yeah. One and a half point guards. Got it. You could get creative with it and just make an entire lineup out of this group! You’d have to fudge some positions a bit and I’m not saying this is the Lineup of Death or anything, but:

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Traore (6’4”)

Powell (6’5”)

Saraf (6’6”)

Denim (6’8”)

Wolf (6’11”)

Heck, they could all be still growing!

Would not look ridiculous just purely on paper positionally. Certainly not if a few of them are eating enough cheeseburgers this summer because three of them were born in 2006(!!) and still skinny!

Traore, Saraf, Demin and Powell ranked among the 20 youngest players in the league. And for Egor and Nolan, I saw flashes of some useful players. I think we need to remember that not a single one of these picks was like a “can’t miss top 4 pick prospect oh my god you can’t screw this one up” guy. You cannot just expect your No. 8 pick to be an All-Star in year 1. You want that guy to be a starting caliber player and as far as I can tell Egor is tracking in that direction. Some muscle, some experience, some improvement at the rim, you have yourself a starting caliber wing. The 3-point shooting last season was a revelation and if that sticks, it’s a huge plus skill for a guy that size.

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The rest of them mostly profile as interesting depth players, which for guys taken in the late first round is pretty good! Do you know what Yang Hansen, Kasparas Jakucionis, and Asa Newell did last year? Not much! And you know what that is? Fine, too!

Do I believe in Ben Saraf? No. I’ll go on record right now and say if I am betting against one, it’s him. But can Traore, Powell, and Wolf all be productive depth pieces on a good basketball team in a year or two? Absolutely. And that’s all they need to be. Will they better? You have to hope so.

The 2018-19 team we all loved (and the team I was covering the most when I wrote of NetsDaily back in the day) was built on the backs of Spencer Dinwiddie, Joe Harris, D’Angelo Russell, Caris LeVert, and Jarrett Allen. Solid players, good players, winning players in some cases, but not All-Stars (God bless D’Angelo’s All-Star appearance that year but like, in the perennial sense of the word).

Also, what is the problem with taking five rookies? It gets scoffed at and never ever actually dissected by some of these basketball analysts but I would love to hear… Why is that bad? This team needs players. More importantly, it needs young players who can develop. They had 5 picks. They used them and three other rooks a total of an NBA record 6,400 minutes last season. I guess the argument could be they could have traded one of the picks? But traded it for… what?… another pick? In the future? Spoiler alert for later but, we already have those. Also could we have? You don’t know what was on the table! I like that we took five rookies, take the swings! You need the swings! Historically we have been lacking in swings!

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If one of these guys is a starter and three of them are productive bench players, I truly am happy and that can make up the bones of a well-rounded NBA roster. Next year will be instructive, and we’ll see what happens, but for the most part I feel good about where the rookies are right now.

The Sixth Pick

I turned my phone off and went on a walk during the Draft Lottery. My stomach hurt the whole time, I knew deep in my bones something bad was going to occur. But wow did it SUCK to turn that phone back on and see where we landed. To be honest I wasn’t even 100% sure we could fall that far. It sucks, again I am here to agree that falling that far sucks, but…

In my life as a Nets fan, which goes back to 2002 but really in an earnest, conscious way starts in 2009 (auspicious, I know), I and we have had so few young prospects to really sink our teeth into. Brook Lopez was one and he is a beloved Nets legend. We had Derrick Favors for about 28 minutes. There was a brief moment where I really honestly had to believe in MarShon Brooks. We’ve had late-round hits, we’ve had misses, but as I mentioned earlier the draft is unpredictable and anyone outside of the top picks you just have to try to find a diamond in the rough and hope for the best.

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At No. 6 … it hits a little bit different. It’s actually an incredibly unenviable spot for Sean Marks. He has to nail it. There’s a cluster of guards, a few wildcards, trade-down options, but no matter what happens nothing is going to fall into his lap. The GM’s in the top of this draft barely have to do anything, just take the guy the other ones didn’t. No one would bat an eye if Boozer goes second or fourth. Peterson drops to No. 3? Ok, sure, no bad options! Wilson would be a steal at No. 4 and a great pick at 3!

But regardless of what we do and who we choose, we will be getting a guy with the highest pick we’ve had since God knows when. I mean it’s since 2010 and Derrick Favors, but I was 14 years old when that happened. I’m literally 30 years old now. It’s not that we’ve forgotten what it’s like to root for a high-potential young guy like that, I don’t think we even know how! Genuinely! Like I don’t think we have the collective experience to understand what that player’s journey might look like and how to act and respond accordingly to it. We have to brush up.

But if we nail it, and we take someone like, I don’t know, Acuff, and he starts to show real flashes of star potential, it is going to be so much fun. And then, all of a sudden, you’re developing a young core with some real wind in their sails. Which brings me to…

Cap Space/Draft Picks/Maneuverability

Lumping all of these together because they all combine to do whatever the opposite of making my stomach hurt is. My heart rate slows down when I pull up Real GM’s Future Nets Draft Picks page.

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I, like many of you reading this I’m sure, were here for the Dark Times. No notable players, no picks, no cap space, no hope. It was bad. Really bad. As bad as it can possibly get, essentially. And the scary thing is, this could refer to a couple of different periods in recent memory.

Where we are now is so, so far away from the light. Even if we have to swap our pick next year we have the Knicks pick and the presumably swapped Houston pick. The year after that we have the most incredibly convoluted Real GM pick swap explanation I have ever seen but ultimately netting out in our favor as far as I can tell (go ahead and read it and report back if you have a law degree). We have the Denver pick eventually, some more Knick picks, one million second rounders, one or two others shoved in there somewhere… It’s a lot. And that is a very good thing. And more valuable than ever given the new Draft Lottery rules.

We also have cap space. Beautiful, gorgeous cap space. The second-most in the league right now according to Spotrac and a couple of pretty easy ways to create more. Marks could use that to throw a max at Austin Reaves, take on a bad contract for more draft equity, or just use it to acquire some solid players and raise the floor of what this team can do in the immediate future… or maybe a secret fourth option I haven’t thought of yet. Point being, we have options, options, options.

Did you hear that? Options! We have maneuverability! We are RICH with both money and possibilities! We are NOT the 2016 Nets. Hell, we aren’t even the 2023 Nets. Is this going to be a good basketball team next year? No!! But we are on our way!

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This takes time and patience and a huge deal of effort. Not to mention luck where, again, we are fighting an uphill battle. Not every team has Victor Wemby, Stephen Castle, and Dylan Harper fall into their laps during a rebuild…

Then, of course, there’s Jordi Fernandez and his merry band of nine — count ‘em — nine assistants. Nobody has a bad word to say about him, most of all his players. For the first time since he was hired in April 2024, his marching orders are to win games, not “play the probabilities,” a nice euphemism for tanking. Moreover, Joe Tsai had his contract and those of his assistants ripped up and extended, each with a raise as well.

On Friday night, after spending a beautiful evening having drinks with friends not far from the Barclays Center, I stopped by my bodega for a snack. The guy behind the grill was, as he always is, wearing a New Jersey Nets cap. Cool guy. I guarantee someone reading this knows where I’m referring to but I’ll dox myself for the sake of the story, who cares.

After I ordered my sandwich I told him “Hey, love your hat!” which to be clear, I have 100% said before. But he works in a bodega and serves God knows how many people a day so he has absolutely no idea who I am. He gave me a thumbs up, I went to peruse the drinks (I got a Vanilla Coke) and when he handed me my sandwich both him and the other guy who is always there said with big smiles “Here you go Nets fan!” Another sign!

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I emailed NetsDaily after getting off that subway on Thursday, asking if I could write this piece and I kid you not me and a guy wearing a KEVIN GARNETT Nets jersey high-fived on Thursday evening. Yep, I figured, Nets universe is healing despite what happened on the other side of the East River.

Other teams might have such hallowed celebrities as A Couple of the Haim Sisters, Bobby Bacala, and Donald J. Trump showing up to their games. There have been more bandwagon fans created in the last two weeks than ever previously considered possible. You may be getting asked yourself who you’ve been rooting for in the NBA finals despite a lifelong, loud, and proud affiliation with the Nets. Again, it’s been a rough few weeks…

So for those of us still here, clicking on NetsDaily, reading to the end of this gratuitously long essay, sifting through the swap rights in 2028, looking up Egor’s stats for the 897th time, that logo will continue to really mean something. The hat means something, the jersey and the t-shirt… More likely than not those are your honest to God fellow Nets fans. No one in their right mind would spend money on the merch for any other reason right now.

I was in Hong Kong in April and witnessed with my own two human eyes a man wearing a crisp 2003 Eastern Conference Finals Champions T-shirt, if only I knew how to speak Cantonese… We are everywhere, don’t let anyone ever tell you we aren’t. (China, for reasons quite clear, is a special case, it’s not unique.)

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We will be back, it’s a matter of when, not if. And I refuse to let anyone put my team down except for myself when I’m feeling a bit cranky. In the meantime, the other guys can enjoy their damn parade and some of my fellow Nets fans will no doubt call me pollyannish. Meh!

And you know what else: in the celebrity sweepstakes, I’ll take Ethan Hawke every day of the damn week, Thursdays included.