The Brooklyn Nets entered this offseason in a difficult spot. With limited assets, improving the roster is going to be a great challenge — even with the expansion of the league salary cap — for General Manager, Sean Marks. For a team in need of a major talent overhaul, trading their second-best player, Thaddeus Young, seemed preposterous.
It’s no surprise the decision to deal Young on draft night was met with mixed emotions from Brooklyn fans, many of which were negative. After all, Young was coming off arguably his best season, and all the Nets were able to obtain for the 28-year-old forward was the 20th overall pick and a future second-rounder.
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During the 101 games he wore a Brooklyn uniform, Young’s game had proven to be compatible with Brook Lopez’s. Not to mention he had been a consummate professional and fan favorite, even before becoming the first Nets player to take the plunge and move with his family to Brooklyn.
With management’s eyes on the future, Marks and company felt Young wasn’t truly a building block for a team in rebuilding mode. Instead, he represented an asset that could be used to obtain someone younger and more athletic. Yes, he was coming off of a very productive season in which he averaged 15.1 points and 9.0 rebounds per game, but perhaps this was simply a case of a player’s statistics being inflated by playing on a 21-win team. After all, Young has averaged 13.9 points with 5.9 rebounds in his career. He’s definitely an effective player, but is he as good as what he showed last season?
Having a player of Young’s caliber on a team is an obvious plus — especially with a favorable contract that runs through the 2017-18 season — but the ability to draft a lottery-talent in Caris LeVert, who fell due to injuries, at that spot may be more beneficial in the long run. The 6’7″ guard from Michigan is only 21-years-old and has the type of upside the Nets need to gamble on.
Initially, I was not a fan of the move, considering LeVert has had multiple surgeries to his foot; however, it’s important to note the procedures were conducted by Dr. Martin O’Malley. He was the doctor who surgically repaired both Lopez and Kevin Durant’s feet, and is directly connected to the Nets organization. The Nets certainly did their homework, and if LeVert’s ailments are truly behind him, Brooklyn has the makings of a dynamic wing pairing with him and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson.
When you’re in the dire situation Brooklyn has gotten themselves into, it takes some out-of-the-box thinking to get out of it. Sean Marks has constantly said the Nets will have to be creative in terms of reshaping the roster to expedite their rebuild. Dealing away Thaddeus Young was a bold move; time will tell if it was the right decision.
To hear more from Jonathan Griggs about the Nets, follow him on Twitter @WeMustBeNets.
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