John Hollinger talks about how the Nets look like the Knicks of old and vice versa.
On Monday, Hollinger wrote how New York’s NBA teams have switched places with the Brooklyn Nets becoming the old version of the New York Knicks … and the reverse.
New York — Once upon a time, this was supposed to be the Brooklyn Nets: Building patiently, developing late draft picks and smart free-agent signings and riding in the slipstream of good culture vibes while keeping their powder dry for just the right moment to pounce on a big star.
Not anymore, of course. Last Saturday, the Knicks punctuated the change with a 105-93 win, their third straight against Brooklyn. The Nets not only lost, but looked outclassed in the fourth quarter. For Hollinger, it’s indicative of how things have changed.
The Knicks, of course, used to be the last team on Earth you’d think would be capable of this. Before Leon Rose and Co. showed up in 2020, no team chased shiny objects down dead ends more enthusiastically than the ’Bockers, with their twin superpowers of incompetence and impatience multiplying each other’s impact.
Meanwhile, Brooklyn did all that stuff perfectly in the beginning of the Sean Marks era; starting in 2016, the Nets turned one of the most hopeless situations in league annals into a scrappy playoff team and then, suddenly, one with multiple superstars on board — after Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving had spurned those same Knicks. Ironically, that’s when everything started going sideways in Brooklyn.
Now, Hollinger writes, “The Knicks became the Nets, and the Nets became the Knicks” with a bad feeling in Brooklyn over the long term.
There’s an unsettling stuck-in-mediocrity feeling about the current post-superstar version of Brooklyn, one it’s having a hard time shaking off. The Nets have no control over their first-round pick this year, and thus no tanking incentive, yet are still miles from making the Play-In Tournament, much less doing anything of enduring significance.
Meanwhile, he writes the Knicks seems to be making all the right moves.
Virtually every key player on the Knicks got there as the result of a plus transaction. Splashing out on Jalen Brunson is one thing, but look up and down the roster: Josh Hart cost a late first, Mitchell Robinson and Miles McBride were picked with early seconds, and Donte DiVincenzo and Isaiah Hartenstein came as screaming bargains via the midlevel exception.
Indeed, Hollinger thinks the Nets are looking at a long rebuild even after deciding against tearing things down to the studs by hanging on to Mikal Bridges. Think a half a decade, roughly the same time it’s taken the Knicks to get where they are.
Where does that leave Brooklyn? Kind of in the same place the Knicks were half a decade ago, badly needing to stack a series of good decisions on top of one another to get anywhere close to the contending class. That exalted air seemed the Nets’ inevitable destiny just a few short years ago. Now it seems likely to be their crosstown rival Knicks’ next half decade instead.
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