The question is simple: How?!?!?
Before I divulge my plan, let us go over some basic housekeeping. I play on the PS4. All games are simmed. Simulation difficulty is set to 50. All sliders are set to 50 for myleague options with the exception of career ending injuries which are turned down to 20. The league has their current pick status set as well. League expansion is turned on but there will only be the 30 teams to start. We are going to keep this as realistic as possible, so I am not going to make crazy trades or anything else like that. I will also be doing minimal league rule changes, if any. Again, we want realism here. My goal for posting will be to do a preseason preview, a review of the team at the all-star break, and again at the end of the season. The preseason preview will hold all offseason activities from the previous year.
So, how do we turn the Nets into contenders? Well, it won’t be easy, as I said, the old management left us with very little for the future and bad contracts. Management used to have a win now mentality, no matter what it does for the future. That is not the approach we are going to take this time. We are going to build our team through the draft and smart trades. We will not be trading bad contracts for bad contracts unless is nets us draft picks, and the player is on the last year of a deal. The players we have with inflated contacts will not get us much in the way of draft picks, but we will do what we can.
We are going to turn this team around through the draft, good coaching, good off season training, and smart off seasons.
I have sat down with the current coach, Kenny Atkinson. He is signed to a 1 year contract. We discussed that we are going to be losing for a while, so my expectation of him is to keep morale on this team up. It’s going to be hard when we are losing 55 to 60 games a year.
Our roster for the 2016-17 season looks like this and their contract years remaining. Player overall and potential are in parentheses:
PG Jeremy Lin (76 B-): 2 years
PG Isaiah Whitehead (68 C): 2 years
PG Yogi Ferrell (66 C-): 1 year
SG Sean Kilpatrick (76 B-): 1 year
SG Caris Levert (72 A-): 2 years
SG Randy Foye (72 C+): 1 year
SG Joe Harris (68 C+): 1 year
SF Bojan Bogdanovic (76 B-): 1 year
SF Rondae Hollis-Jefferson (72 B): 1 year
PF Luis Scola (74 B-): 1 year
PF Trevor Booker (73 B-): 2 years
PF Anthony Bennett (70 C+): 1 year
PF Chris Mccollough (69 B+): 1 year
C Brook Lopez (81 B): 2 years
C Justin Hamilton 72 (B-): 2 years
Roster Assessment:
Looking at the roster, we have players like Lin, Booker, and Lopez who are all over payed for their skill level. None of those 3 are bad players, but the contracts are bad. It will be hard to find a buyer for any of these players, especially with the huge cap hit that Lopez’s $21 million salary will cause. There are a few players that have some potential for a future on our team, granted they get into training camp over the summer. Mccollough and Levert will be the focus of training camp over the summer. They are 21 and 22 years old respectively, and can have a bright future if coached the right way. Bogdanovic is another player we will probably keep around. He is 27 and at his max potential, but he can be a good place holder for the future of this team, as will Kilpatrick. No player on this team is untouchable though. There will be no trades or free agency signings, unless warranted by roster injuries until the Trade Deadline.
Training camp during the offseason will be untapped potential for those players aged 24 or less, who will have a future with this team.
The teams currently held draft picks: 2017 1st round (swap worst with Boston), 2017 2nd round, 2019 1st round, 2020 1st round.
As can be seen by the utter lack of draft picks, a lot of our future has been traded away for players that no longer wear the black and white of the Brooklyn Nets.
We do not have a set timeline for us to be contenders. It will be a process. A long process.
So, with that said, I present my Brooklyn Nets dynasty. This is also my first dynasty on here.
Thanks for reading!
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