With Krstic Down, Nets Learn the Hard Way

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

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Pro Football injuries may be more frequent, and hockey’s more spectacular, but in no sport is team success as heavily affected by injuries as in pro basketball.

With just five players on the court at any given moment, and only seven or eight taking up the vast majority of the playing time, the removal of one cog from the machine does far more damage in the NBA than in the other pro team sports.

The Nets are in the process of learning this lesson the hard way. I wrote at the end of last week that New Jersey’s expectations for this season had been unrealistic because it was unlikely the foursome of Jason Kidd, Vince Carter, Richard Jefferson, and Nenad Krstic would be as healthy as they were a year earlier.

Of course, when I said this, I had no way of knowing how immediately I would be proved correct. Krstic blew out his knee that very night and now will miss the rest of the season. Throw in the already diminished status of Jefferson thanks to a nagging right ankle problem that may require surgery, and it seems the Nets might do best to start thinking about next year.

Nobody on Paterson Plank Road is saying this out loud yet. For one, New Jersey still has Jason Kidd and Vince Carter, giving it two more stars than anybody else in the division right now (Paul Pierce, Wally Szczerbiak, and Chris Bosh are injured, Allen Iverson is gone, and Stephon Marbury is a spent force).

Additionally, if the Nets were going to lose one of their “Big Four” — Krstic was the guy to lose. The Nets have several frontcourt players that can fill in as a Band-Aid, including energizer Mikki Moore, first-round pick Josh Boone, European import Mile Ilic, and the justback-from-injury Clifford Robinson. They can also play small — an increasingly viable option in today’s NBA —and use Jefferson or Bostjan Nachbar at power forward while Jason Collins or Moore mans the middle.

Nonetheless, Krstic’s departure will leave a mark. He was the Nets’ best interior scorer, and with the decline of Collins he was possibly their best interior defender, too. Moreover, he played 32.7 minutes per game, which in itself had value. In today’s game, a great many big men are simply incapable of staying on the court that long because the fouls pile up too quickly.

From a mathematical perspective, Krstic and his 17.3 PER (a career best) check out of the lineup, and Moore and his 14.4 PER check in. Other things being equal, a decline of three points in PER over a period of 55 games, for about 32.7 minutes a game, will cost a team about three wins (quick rule of thumb: Every one-point drop in PER over the course of 2,000 minutes is worth about one win). In this case, other things are mostly equal — if Moore can keep up the energy, he can come close to replicating Krstic’s contribution defensively.

However, Moore averages nearly a foul every six minutes, which makes it hard for him to make up all 32.7 minutes played by Krstic; based on the pattern of other players with similar foul frequency, I doubt Moore would be able to manage more than 25. Additionally, if Moore replaces Krstic’s minutes, that means Moore’s former minutes have to go somewhere else.

This is where injuries usually hammer teams with poor benches — it’s not the replacement that’s the big problem, but the replacement’s replacement. Boone, Nachbar, Ilic, and/or Clifford Robinson are likely to post a PER around 10 or less, and having them combine for 24 minutes a night — the 16.5 Moore averaged plus the 7.7 of Krstic’s that he can’t soak up — will cost New Jersey an additional three wins.

So the injury, in total, will knock about six wins off the Nets’ sum, and this from a team that was already on pace to be terrible. New Jersey’s 11–16 record actually paints a better picture than reality, because they’ve played a huge number of home games against a light schedule. Basically, this was a team heading toward a 50-loss season even before the injury. With the six-win deduction for Krstic’s loss, we’re now looking at a full-on train wreck.

Now let’s throw in two other facts: This is the best draft class in years and after this season, the Nets’ best player is a free agent who can leave without compensation. If we take a cold hard look at the situation, the conclusion is obvious: It’s time to blow it up.

As hard as this is for the Nets to admit in a season that began with talk of winning the East, they aren’t anywhere near good enough to challenge the league’s elite. Plus, it’s hard to argue the veteran-laden roster would perform any better in future seasons than it has in this one.

Meanwhile, the Nets are sitting on a gold mine in the form of Vince Carter. Dealing him to a contender before the trade deadline can return enough assets to New Jersey (young players, draft picks, etc.) that it would greatly speed the rebuilding process.

Additionally, by trading Carter soon, and telling Jefferson, “Thanks for your incredible dedication, but we’d like you 100% for the next year so your surgery is scheduled for 2 p.m.,” New Jersey would position itself to post one of the league’s worst records. That, in turn, would get them a high lottery pick in a draft that’s absolutely loaded, perhaps even winning them the big man — like Greg Oden or Joakim Noah — the team so clearly needs.

If so, the 2007–08 Nets might not be as marketable or spectacular as the Kidd–to–Carter show was the past two seasons. But it would be a deep team capable of withstanding injury, and it would be one far better positioned for the future than the current edition of the Nets.

Thus, while any on-court interest the Nets might have provided ended the moment Krstic went down, there remains one huge story off the court. Between now and the trade deadline, we’ll learn whether Nets team president Rod Thorn has the courage to reach for the dynamite and start over.

jhollinger@nysun.com


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