BROOKLYN — Nobody should bet on the Brooklyn Nets to win much of anything this season, even if they are the better of the two teams playing basketball in New York.
Want to bet on which team gets the least respect from the referees?
Well, those odds are about even money. The Nets get zero.
Coach Kenny Atkinson got tossed with 1:05 left after a moving screen was called on Jared Dudley that wiped out a game-tying 3-pointer by Joe Harris that may have helped Brooklyn extend its winning streak to eight.
Nominations for Vein Popping Tirade of the Night were closed at that very moment.
“It was an intense game, a tough game — just emotional. I don’t want to comment on the refereeing. That’s not my place,”Atkinson said. “I said my piece to them during the game, and obviously they didn’t like what I said.”
One member of the Nets who was on the receiving end of a number of bad calls was so irate afterward, he could be heard screaming in the players lounge.
Afterward, he gathered himself enough to speak publicly and kept things chill.
But privately, he said this: Victor Oladipo got every single call. Every single call. All night.”
So it goes when you are basically a young team that has not earned any respect around the league despite the spell of recent success. Brooklyn could have moved into the eighth playoff spot with a victory, but the euphoria that came out of the victory over the Los Angeles Lakers will not carry through the weekend and into Sunday night’s matchup with Phoenix.
Brooklyn is 250-1 to win the NBA championship, the same odds as the Knicks, Bulls, Suns, Grizzlies, Wizards, Cavs, Pistons, Heat, Hornets, Kings, Hawks and Magic.
There are some decent teams mixed in with the bottom feeders there, and Brooklyn is often overlooked as a team that might make something out of this season while they hold cap space for next season.
If there is a player who is expendable on the Nets, at this point it has to be D’Angelo Russell. He was only 1-for-8 for 3 points and did not attempt a single free throw, while Spencer Dinwiddie came off the bench and had 15 points, nine assists and eight free throw attempts.
Clearly, there is a need to jettison one of them at some point, and Russell still has value after having a career night two games previous against the Lakers.
Russell is making $7 million on the next-to-last year of his rookie deal, and his contract could be combined with Kenneth Faried ($13.7 million) to bring back a quality player. Brooklyn has its own pick and Denver’s first-round pick, along with five extra second-round picks between now and 2022.
At a certain point, Sean Marks needs to decide whether bringing in a max level player should happen in-season or over the summer when more than half of the NBA will be free agents. He has already given Dinwiddie a three-year extension, so we know where the N ets stand on him.
Russell? The same can’t be said.
For now, they are a work in progress with no chance of doing much of anything in the playoffs as currently constituted. But there is low-hanging fruit out there (Bradley Beal, Jabari Parker, etc.) that could be acquired if Marks wants to go after it.
The questions he has to be asking himself are these: Now? In January? In February? Or after the draft in June.
Until then, the biggest thing he can count on is the whistles going the wrong way.
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