The Nets 2 worst roster experiments of the Brooklyn era
By Brian Ramos
Over the past decade, Brooklyn’s roster has featured many high-ceiling young players. As soon as those players start blossoming, like Caris LeVert and Jarrett Allen, Brooklyn has broken up the young core and traded for star players.
It has failed every time. Here is a look at the crazy roster shuffling Brooklyn has undergone over the past decade.
Experiment One: The Big Ticket & The Truth To Brooklyn
In the summer of 2013, the Brooklyn Nets made a catastrophic trade with the Boston Celtics. The Nets received Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, Jason Terry, D.J. White, a 2017 first-round draft pick swap (Kyle Kuzma), and a 2017 second-round draft pick (Sasha Vezenkov).
The Celtics received Keith Bogans, MarShon Brooks, Kris Humphries, Kris Joseph, Gerald Wallace, a 2014 first-round draft pick (James Young), a 2016 1st round draft pick (Jaylen Brown), a 2017 first-round draft pick swap (Boston traded the pick to Philadelphia and selected Jayson Tatum with the pick acquired from the 76ers), and a 2018 1st round draft pick (Boston traded the pick to Cleveland for Kyrie Irving).
The Nets were going all in, hoping to win their first-ever NBA Championship, with a core of Garnett, Pierce, Deron Williams, Joe Johnson, and Brook Lopez. That team also had one of the deepest benches in the league, with guys such as Shaun Livingston, Andrei Kirilenko, and Terry.
In the first season of the revamped team, the 2013-14 season, Brooklyn went 44-38, which was five games worse than the previous season, and were eliminated in the second round of the playoffs. Garnett averaged single-digit points for the first time in his career.
That ended up being Pierce’s only one season with the Nets, and he averaged just 13.5 points per game. Terry averaged the least points of his career since his rookie season and departed from Brooklyn.
The following season, Garnett’s last as a Net, Brooklyn went 38-44 and lost in the first round of the playoffs. This Nets experiment failed miserably, as Brooklyn never even made it to the conference finals and ended up giving Boston draft capital that turned into Tatum and Brown.