Brooklyn Nets: Why We Shouldn’t Be Worried About Their Preseason Woes
By Sandy Mui
Relax, it’s only the preseason
A bit obvious and overstated, but yes, it’s only the preseason.
Preseason games don’t count for a reason. It’s meant to give the players and coaching staff time to figure out which lineups work and which don’t. New players also get time to work their way into a new system and find their groove. And Brooklyn has a LOT of new faces — talk about a roster turnover. Not only that though, we got a first look at Kenny Atkinson as a head coach for the very first time. And that wasn’t too bad.
Plus, six preseason contests are not exactly a large enough sample size to judge how the team will do during the regular season. Brooklyn did not face off against every team imaginable, and even saw matchups with the same teams twice (Boston and New York). Even if you aren’t familiar with stats, a brief six-game tournament does not dictate the outcome of a whole 82-game season.
Furthermore, Atkinson made sure not to overwork his main unit in these “meaningless” games. In most of the contests, Atkinson kept his players to 20 minutes or less of action, with just a few guys exceeding this amount, but not by much.
The games that came down to the wire were what mainly accounted for a greater amount of minutes. In the Nets’ first matchup against the Boston Celtics, a few players saw more than 20 minutes of playing time, with Trevor Booker leading the pack with 30 minutes.
Additionally, the preseason finale against the New York Knicks was treated as a regular season matchup. This game came down to the wire as well, and the Nets fell very short to their crosstown rivals, 111-116. Jeremy Lin saw the most action (30 minutes), with four other players also receiving more than 20 minutes.
Most of the preseason matchups were not in any shape of form like regular season games though, and we probably (and hopefully) won’t see a correlation between preseason results and regular season results.