Keep the Knicks close & their enemies closer: Brooklyn’s offseason with Lucas Kaplan
A New York NBA team stuck somewhere between champagne dreams and beer pockets? Knicks fans can relate.
Welcome to KTKCATEC, a wordily-titled place for postseason/offseason questions concerning the New York Knicks’ chief rivals — contemporaneous or geographical. Today Lucas Kaplan, who covers the Brooklyn Nets and the New York Liberty for NetsDaily while also making analytics accessible via SwishTheory, gives us the 411 on the former 718.
What can you tell us about Team Canada/new Nets coach Jordi Fernández?
It’s been a long time coming for Fernández, I can tell you that. He was a “finalist” for the Phoenix Suns’ job last offseason and a serious candidate for the Hawks before that. Prior to this season, the 22nd annual NBA GM Survey ranked him the “best assistant coach in the NBA.” (Nine GMs voted for him; the next-closest was Terry Stotts with three . . . so maybe that’s a bad omen?)
He’s highly regarded not only in NBA circles, but internationally too; he’ll be coaching Team Canada at the Olympics this summer. There I’ll get to learn something small about his coaching style and philosophy, though we know he’s seen as a key contributor to the Sacramento Kings’ offensive emergence around Domantas Sabonis.
In sum, it’s a nice feeling to hire a coach whose time was clearly coming, one who has been praised directly by peers like Mike Brown and Michael Malone, and indirectly from the NBA’s general manager crop. The task of fixing the Brooklyn Nets – their offense specifically, the side of the court where Fernández seems to have more expertise – is a tall one. But I don’t know, why not him?
Are the Nets rebuilding? Re-tooling? Rethinking everything? Do you take a new nine-man coaching staff with zero combined NBA experience to mean sooner than later their present will be all about their future?
They’re just vibing. You wouldn’t get it.
I don’t know, I’ve been questioning my own thought process recently, and whether I’m falling into a sunk-cost fallacy analyzing Brooklyn. Because I wrote at that fateful 2023 deadline, and in no uncertain terms a couple months later, that it was time to truly rebuild. I don’t care that they didn’t have their own picks (remember how they built a pretty damn good team with those three Hall-of-Famers?), but rather that they had a bunch of tradable assets comprising a mediocre team.
A year later I should think the same, right? But really, their situation isn’t too bad. Ben Simmons’ max is now expiring, they have a lot of draft picks with those Phoenix ones being enticing as hell, and if they tear it down now what the hell did we just do those last nine months for?!
Anyway, I don’t view the hires as indicating a certain direction, and I think the front office would basically agree with my viewpoint. Are they continuing to shoot themselves in the foot? Maybe, but they also might be setting themselves up to add one or two players and completely transform the roster. I think in terms of the coaching staff they’ve just set up Fernández to operate how he likes, and to grow with a roster for a journey that won’t be too quick.
Perhaps relatedly: where would you guess Mikal Bridges is playing in six months?
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The next piece in this series, care of Dave Early, centers on the Philadelphia 76ers and will run later this week!
