Lichtenstein: Young Lakers Show Nets What Might Have Been

By Steve Lichtenstein
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You'd think that as a Nets fan I'd be used to all the losing, but watching Brooklyn's 125-118 loss to the host Lakers on Tuesday night was doubly depressing.

You see, the Lakers are everything the Nets want to be, but can't.

Both big-city teams were coming off horrendous 2015-16 campaigns. In the offseason, both teams hired good, young coaches with highly regarded reputations from working as assistants in the league. And they both pledged to rebuild their respective franchises around young players, with some savvy veterans sprinkled through the rotation.

There's no question that both clubs — and their fan bases — are pleased with the early returns to date. The games have been entertaining, if you're not much into defense, and even the defeats have been close with a couple of exceptions on each side.

However, while Luke Walton's Lakers have snuck up on the NBA by going 7-5 to open the season in the highly competitive Western Conference, Kenny Atkinson has been receiving almost as many accolades for the job he has been doing with his Nets sinking to 4-7.

Do you see the disconnect?

The Lakers are a team clearly on the rise while we can only hope that one day — and it could legitimately take a few more years -- the Nets won't stink.

This current predicament is not Atkinson's fault — the Nets have been playing the past two weeks without a legitimate NBA point guard after starter Jeremy Lin strained a hamstring and backup Greivis Vasquez was waived following his inability to fully recover from last season's ankle injury. Sean Kilpatrick has been pressed into a service for which he is unqualified, with two rookies — Isaiah Whitehead and Yogi Ferrell — as his only backups.

Walton's team, on the other hand, is much more flush with talent. He has had the pleasure of reaping the benefits from past Lakers drafts, which in the last three years yielded current starters D'Angelo Russell and Julius Randle plus key reserves Brandon Ingram, Jordan Clarkson, and Larry Nance Jr.

Those five players combined to score 75 points on 48 percent shooting from the field against Brooklyn on Tuesday.

In that same period, the Nets selected forward Chris McCullough, who is swinging back and forth between Brooklyn and its Long Island D-League affiliate, and traded for the rights to rehabilitating wing Caris LeVert and guards Rondae Hollis-Jefferson and Whitehead. Ferrell was an undrafted free agent pickup over the summer.

Their combined production Tuesday? Seventeen points on 40 percent shooting.

As everyone knows by now, former general manager Billy King sold off a large chunk of Brooklyn's draft picks in a failed attempt to win the hearts of New Yorkers when the club moved from New Jersey in 2012. Deron Williams, Gerald Wallace and Joe Johnson cost the Nets multiple opportunities to draft in past first rounds, and the team is still paying off the debt to Boston for the summer 2013 blockbuster that brought over Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Jason Terry. The Celtics will have the right to swipe draft slots in 2017 and own the Nets' 2018 selection outright.

No matter how you slice it, it's always going to be easier to develop young players when you keep your lottery picks.

Russell, who dropped 32 points on Brooklyn by nailing 7 of 13 bombs from behind the 3-point line, and Randle, who recorded a triple-double of 17 points, 14 rebounds and 10 assists, are building blocks.

Hollis-Jefferson, who was benched in favor of Joe Harris for much of the second half, and McCullough, who did not play (coach's decision), are just not in that class.

Instead, the Nets have been trying to swim with the adults by mostly surrounding Lin and gifted offensive center Brook Lopez with an earnest crew of relatively unskilled labor.

Outside of Hollis-Jefferson, the only "young" players who actually play on a regular basis are 26-year-old center Justin Hamilton, 25-year-old Harris and 26-year-old Kilpatrick, none of whom were taken in the first round of a draft.

The Nets have been receiving excellent value for the above investments. They play hard, which is supposed to be all you can ask, but in the end, you realize they will probably never be anything more than bit players on a contending team.

Sure, you can get excited about the play of Ferrell, who at one point during the Nets' 127-95 blowout loss to the Clippers on Monday blew past superstar Chris Paul for a layup and then recorded 11 points and four assists against the Lakers. But then you remember the long odds that players of his pedigree have to stick, let alone star, in the NBA.

And that's when the depression hits again.

Brooklyn general manager Sean Marks has only been on the job for about nine months, and he has said that owner Mikhail Prokhorov has blessed his vision of a slow rebuild.

That was little comfort to me when I watched the Nets play the Lakers on Tuesday, however. I could only shake my head and wonder what might have been.

For a FAN's perspective of the Nets, Jets and the NHL, follow Steve on Twitter @SteveLichtenst1