No longer among the laughingstocks of the NBA, the Nets have gone from winless in their first seven games, with just one victory through a dozen games, and 3-16 as recently as just over a week ago, to having won three of four.
The reasons aren’t complicated: Michael Porter Jr. has been a force when healthy; their defense, which was abysmal in the early going, has improved; and some of their rookies are starting to contribute.
And as they wait to play their next game, Friday at Dallas, the Nets are 4-5 since Nov. 16.
While they’re far from a formidable team, they’ve shown some encouraging signs.
“You can feel, as a group, we’re getting better,” Porter said following their most recent victory, which came at Barclays Center against New Orleans.
“We knew going into the season we had a young group and it was gonna take some time,’’ Porter said of the inexperienced roster after the Nets selected five players in the first round of the NBA draft. “But we’ve done a really good job getting better over the course of the season, and I feel we’re a completely different team right now than we were Games 1 through 7.”
Back then, they were routinely giving up 120-plus points per game and seemed well on their way to a historically bad season.
But coach Jordi Fernández preached patience, and after getting an undermanned Nets team to a surprising 26 wins last year, he’s begun to get the most out of this year’s team, as well.
It helps when the schedule offers up games against a three-win New Orleans team, as well as scuffling Charlotte and Chicago, as has been the case in the three victories, but it beats getting trounced on a regular basis.
“It’s never easy to win an NBA game,” Fernandez said. “This team has played a lot of close games and competed.”
That’s resulted in more productive minutes from rookies like Egor Dëmin, who had seven assists against New Orleans, as well as Danny Wolf (seven points, four rebounds and two assists in 19 minutes) and Ben Saraf (seven points, four assists).
Wolf has put up 12.8 points, 5.6 rebounds and 2.6 assists per game over his past five and impressed Porter in the process.
“Danny has, the last few games, really shown he’s NBA ready,” Porter said. “He’s ready to contribute to winning right now and being depended on.”
Fernández added, “We’re taking positive steps. On both ends of the floor, we played the right way.”
There also are issues that will take time to fix, like three turnovers apiece from Dëmin and Wolf.
Still, things could be much worse.
Just ask New Orleans, which hasn’t won a playoff series in nearly a decade, even after drafting Zion Williamson with the first-overall pick in 2019.
Williamson is hurt again, and the Pelicans, with the worst record in the league, don’t even own their first-round pick next year, having traded it away in exchange for the pick they used on Derik Queen at No. 13.
And the Nets’ next game comes against a team in the Mavericks that ended up with the first-overall pick, when the lottery fortunes landed in their favor and they selected Cooper Flagg.
So Fernández will continue to try to come up with ways for his young team to succeed and he said he’s “happy with the way we’re evolving,” especially on defense.
But their schedule is about to get tougher, with games upcoming against the Mavericks and struggling Milwaukee before facing Miami, Toronto, Philadelphia, Minnesota, Golden State and Houston.
