What’s wrong with this picture? Vince Carter is back to his Vinsane self, Jason Kidd is turbo-charging the New Jersey fast break, and Nenad Krstic is coming along nicely, pumping in a career-high 25 against the Bobcats on Friday. Yet the Nets’ offense remains terrible.

I’ve written before about the Nets’ offensive shortcomings, but that was before the Carter trade. With Vince depositing 26.1 points per game since his arrival and Kidd averaging 17 points and 10 assists in the month of February, New Jersey should wield enough of a 1-2 punch to have a fairly decent offense.

“Should” is the operative word here. Through Saturday’s games, the Nets ranked 28th in the league in Offensive Efficiency, with 97.3 points scored per 100 possessions; the league average is 103.3. The Nets are barely holding off Atlanta and New Orleans (both teams have an Offensive Efficiency of 97.2) for the dubious honor of being dead last; since both the Hawks and Hornets gave up on the season several months ago, this is a shocking state of affairs.

Don’t let yesterday’s 104-98 win over Cleveland fool you. The five preceding games better reflected New Jersey’s moribund attack. Against five below-average defenses (Sacramento, Minnesota, Milwaukee, Toronto, and Charlotte), the Nets failed to clear 100 points once. In consecutive games against the Bucks and Raptors, the Nets scored 82 and 81 points, respectively, including a pathetic 33-point second half in Milwaukee.

So what’s going on here? Plenty of other teams have non-scorers surrounding their key offensive personnel, yet they still manage to produce on the offensive end. San Antonio, for instance, racks up points despite starting Bruce Bowen and Rasho Nesterovic, while last year’s Timberwolves boasted an impressive offense despite rarely getting points from starters Trenton Hassell and Ervin Johnson.

The difference is that those other teams can count on reasonably productive players in secondary roles – San Antonio can bring Beno Udrih, Robert Horry, or Devin Brown off the pine and get double-figure scoring, while the T-wolves have ace shooters Wally Szczerbiak and Fred Hoiberg waiting in the wings. The Nets, in contrast, are a desert of offense surrounding the oasis of Kidd, Carter, and, to a lesser extent, Krstic.

Take a look at those five games again and things start to make sense. The Kidd-Carter-Krstic triumvirate did its part, but the Nets only had two double-figure scoring nights from the rest of the crew over the five games. That’s why New Jersey looked so awful while Krstic was out with the flu – nobody could pick up the offensive slack.

It’s hard to see the ineptitude of the Nets’ other offensive players just from watching the games, but the numbers bring it into sharp focus. Carter (26.1 ppg since arriving in New Jersey) and Kidd (14.1) are the only two active Nets averaging in double figures, while Krstic is third at 8.3 ppg a game.

(Richard Jefferson was leading the team at 22.2 ppg when he went down with a season-ending wrist injury; Rodney Buford, also on injured reserve, averages 8.8 ppg.)

It’s not just that the other Nets don’t score, however – it’s also that they’re low-percentage shooters. To see what I mean, just look at their points per shot attempt. This measures how many points a player gets from each attempt, accounting for 3-pointers and foul shots. A “shot attempt” here is thus defined as field-goal attempts plus free-throw attempts times 0.44.

As the accompanying chart shows, a wide chasm separates the Nets’ big three from many of their less productive teammates. Additionally, none are good 3-point shooters, so their percentages are even worse than they seem at first glance. And here’s the zinger: Carter’s mark of 1.07, which tops the Nets’ list, is the league average. Every other Net is below that mark, many of them dramatically so.

On most teams, Carter and Kidd would constitute the nuts and bolts of a decent offense because they produce a large quantity of shots at roughly league-average accuracy. Unfortunately, no team in basketball has role players who are less gifted on offense than New Jersey’s. I mean nobody – not Atlanta, not the Hornets, not even the Bobcats. That goes a long way toward explaining how the Nets are still struggling despite Carter’s nightly fireworks. Even yesterday’s win showed off the Nets’ weaknesses – while the big three shot a respectable 19-of-43, the rest of the cast was an ugly 13-of-36, with only Ron Mercer (10 points) managing to creep into double figures.

In the short term, the Nets should get a bit of a boost now that Zoran Planinic is back (if Lawrence Frank ever plays him, that is).That’s not an endorsement of Planinic but a condemnation of his teammates. With his average of 17.2 points per 40 minutes, he’ll seem like Bernard King compared to Travis Best and Ron Mercer.

That probably won’t be enough to rescue the Nets this year, but monitor Planinic’s impact carefully, because it could be multiplied several times over next season. Rod Thorn doesn’t need to seek out another Vince Carter in free agency this summer, he just needs to use his mid-level exceptions to find a few guys who can knock down an open jump shot.

Herein lies the opportunity. While it’s frustrating to see a team with Vince Carter and Jason Kidd struggle so mightily to put the ball in the basket, all New Jersey has to do is secure some role players who aren’t awful, and they should move up in the standings fairly quickly. They already have the star talent in Carter, Kidd, and (next year) Richard Jefferson, and that’s the hardest part about building a winner.

So stay tuned, Nets fans, and don’t adjust your sets. There’s nothing wrong with this picture that can’t easily be fixed.