Saving the Nets' Season

The Brooklyn Nets are bad. In fact, they are the worst team in the NBA. Unlike most teams who finish as one of the worst teams in the NBA, the Brooklyn Nets do not have the consolation prize of a high draft pick. Theirs will go to the Boston Celtics, who own the rights to swap picks. The Nets’ best player is a 29-year-old center with a troublesome injury history and only grabs five rebounds a game. Their next best player is Jeremy Lin, who is on his fourth team in four years, and is also Jeremy Lin. So, uh, what solace do the Nets have? They’ve surged through March on a something of a hot streak but are still five games behind (ahead?) of the Los Angeles Lakers for the worst record in the league. Because no real metric will be able to soften the blow of this season’s horrors, we are forced to create a fictional silver lining. There are two ways we can try to do this:

First, if the current members of the Brooklyn Nets roster combined their careers, would it create a Hall of Fame caliber player?

Second, if the members of the Brooklyn Nets roster combined their career earnings from their NBA salaries, would they be able to buy an island on which to live out the remainder of their lives and save themselves from the embarrassment of being on the Brooklyn Nets?

Let’s start with the first question. Before we dive in though, let’s name this player. How about we name him Billy King, in honor of the team’s former general manager that helped orchestrate this dumpster fire of a roster. Welcome to the world Billy King. Let’s see if you make the Hall. To figure out the answer, we first need to establish some framework. The standards for entry into the Hall of Fame adjust over time, so to set our baseline threshold let’s take the averages of some major counting statistics for the last 5 HOF classes, per Basketball Reference:

Before we proceed, it is important to understand that the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame is first and foremost a basketball hall of fame. That means it does not limit one’s qualifications simply to accomplishments on an NBA court. International play, college accolades, and general influence on the growth and improvement of the game are also factors that contribute to players’ cases. Therefore, if we were to only consider the primary counting statistics of the recent entrants to the Hall, we would be setting the bar too low for Billy King. A player like Yao Ming wasn’t inducted on the strength of his relatively low numerical totals, but because of his greater influence on basketball as a whole. Thus his stats aren’t truly representative of what it generally takes to get in. If it’s alright with you, dear reader, let’s remove some of the obvious candidates who gained entry thanks in large part to accomplishments outside of the NBA. That way we can hopefully arrive at a more accurate statistical baseline for enshrinement.

The easiest way to sort out which inductees we should exclude is to simply cut off anyone who didn’t play 820 NBA/ABA games. That’s 10 full seasons. If you didn’t play 10 full seasons, chances are that you got into the Hall either because you had an outsized international influence, you dominated in the ABA for a short period of time, or you played a long ass time ago and only the Bob Ryans of the world know who you are. Here’s the inductees that this threshold cuts off, along with a tidbit about where their non-NBA impact was largest:

Yao Ming - 486 games (China)

Cumberland Posey - 0 Games (Just look him up, dude is also in the Baseball HOF)

Sarunas Marciulionis - 363 Games (Lithuania)

Roger Brown - 605 Games (ABA)

Oscar Schmidt - 0 Games (Brazil)

Mel Daniels - 639 Games (ABA)

Ralph Sampson - 465 Games (College)

If you exclude the statistics of these players, the adjusted averages look like this:

Now here’s the career stat line for Grant Hill:

So the *very unscientific* baseline to get into the Naismith Hall of Fame for the past five years is essentially “be Grant Hill.” Seeing as Grant Hill is not in the Hall of Fame, this threshold seems quite generous. Let’s see how Billy King measures up:

Whoa. We probably should have expected that combining the careers of fifteen dudes would result in some pretty big numbers, but these totals were genuinely surprising. Brook Lopez accounts for over a third of the team’s combined win shares, along with the sole All-Star Game appearance, but the rest of the roster still manages to combine for over 24,000 points without him. Let’s unpack these statistics one by one and flesh out what kind of career Billy King would have had.

35,095 Points: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is the NBA’s all-time leader in points scored with 38,387. Karl Malone is in 2nd place, with 36,928. Billy King would rank 3rd, just ahead of Kobe Bryant. Congratulations Billy King, you are better than Kobe. I hope Kobe reads this and comes out of retirement just to pass fictional Billy King. Never change, Kobe.

Ruling: Hall Worthy

13,607 Rebounds: Wilt Chamberlain is the NBA’s all-time leader in rebounds with 23,924. Billy King’s 13,607 would put him in 15th place, just ahead of Shaquille O’Neal. Shaq also never played for the Nets though, and since Billy King is the Nets, Shaq wins by default.

Ruling: Hall Worthy

6820 Assists: John Stockton is the NBA’s all-time leader in assists, with 15,806. Billy King’s 6,820 would put him in 19th place, just ahead of -wait a fucking second- DERON WILLIAMS???

Ruling: LOL.

3,606 Games Played: There are 82 games in an NBA season. That means it would take 44 full seasons to complete 3606 games. Robert Parish is the NBA’s all time leader in games played, logging 1611 games over his 21 seasons.

Ruling: Billy King is a goddamn ironman.

143.2 Win Shares: Every player with 140 or more career win shares is either in the Hall of Fame, or certainly will be once eligible for induction.

Ruling: Hall Worthy

1 All-Star Appearance/0 All-NBA teams: Deron Williams has 3 All-Star appearances and 2 All-NBA nods.

Ruling: LOL, again.

0 Titles: For a player who was in the league for 44 years, the fact that Billy King never won a single title is shocking. Granted, if you calculate his per game averages this becomes a lot less surprising.

Over his 44 year NBA career Billy King averaged 9.7ppg/3.7rpg/1.8apg.

Those are almost the exact same averages Richard Jefferson put up during his 2001-2002 rookie season. Which team was Richard Jefferson playing for at that time? The Nets! Granted, this was back when they were actually good, and also in New Jersey, but still. Richard Jefferson finally won his first NBA title last year as a member of the Cleveland Cavaliers during his 15th NBA season. If every Richard Jefferson season counts as 44 Billy King seasons, King can expect to win his first title in 660 years, at which point Richard Jefferson will probably still be in the league.

Ruling: RJ <3

OVERALL RULING: Billy King is a Hall of Fame caliber player. Congratulations Brooklyn, you made it.

Now, for the second question: if the members of the Brooklyn Nets roster combined their career earnings from their NBA salaries, would they be able to buy an island on which to live out the remainder of their lives and save themselves from the embarrassment of being on the Brooklyn Nets?

Including this season, the career earnings of the players on the Brooklyn Nets roster total $241,090,712.

According to a Google search, there is an island in the Bahamas called Lobster Island and it is for sale for $5,500,000.

Ruling: The Brooklyn Nets could buy it 43 times.

Congratulations again guys. Enjoy not playing for the Nets.