(All stats and records through Jan. 15; for report cards for all 30 teams click here.)
Offense: 100.7, 28th Overall
Defense: 109.2, 28th Overall
W-L | Pct. | GB
8-32, .200, 21.5
Conf.: 3-21
Div.: 0-7
Home: 7-14
Road: 1-18
FRONTCOURT: C
Brook Lopez is shooting threes and scoring more efficiently than he ever has. But he’s not getting much help and the Nets’ frontline is too slow-footed to keep up with offenses that move the ball and attack off the dribble.
BACKCOURT: F
With Jeremy Lin having missed 28 of the first 40 games with two separate hamstring injuries, the Nets have been left without anyone that has any experience in running an NBA offense. Their point guards can’t shoot or take care of the ball.
DEFENSE: D
The Nets were a disaster defensively over the first nine weeks of the season, trying to play aggressive on that end of the floor without the personnel to do so. They have shown signs of improvement here and there since late December.
BENCH: F
The Nets have a couple of vets who can shoot and some young players with useful skills, but nobody that can provide consistent production or help them on both ends of the floor. They rank 28th in bench NetRtg.
COACHING: C
Kenny Atkinson has been dealt a brutal hand, especially because he hasn’t had a point guard. He does have the Nets spreading the floor and taking the right kinds of shots, but has struggled to come up with an effective defensive scheme.
OVERALL GRADE: F
“The Process” in Brooklyn may be more painful than what they endured in Philadelphia over the last three years, because there are no high draft picks coming at the end of losing seasons. The Nets won’t have their own first round pick until 2019 and it may be long after that before they have a team that can compete for a playoff spot.
General manager Sean Marks won’t try for a quick fix, and he really doesn’t have any choice but to build slow and organically. He’s changing the culture in Brooklyn, but thus far, he hasn’t made much of the one asset — cap space — he does have. Signing Greivis Vasquez (who wasn’t recovered from ankle surgery and was eventually waived) as the back-up point guard was a swing and a miss that has really hurt this team’s ability to compete from night to night.
Trading Lopez may be a way to replenish the Nets’ draft picks, with the hope being that one of those picks would eventually be as good a player as Lopez. And if the Nets do trade their center before the deadline, the short-term outlook would only get uglier than it already is.
John Schuhmann is a staff writer for NBA.com. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on Twitter.
The views on this page do not necessarily reflect the views of the NBA, its clubs or Turner Broadcasting.