The Brooklyn Nets have been one of the more interesting teams in the NBA over the past few seasons. Despite being considered a contender because of Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, and James Harden, the most that the organization achieve during the superstar era was getting to the Eastern Conference Semi-Finals before losing to the eventual champion Milwaukee Bucks.
During the trade deadline this past February, Irving and Durant requested to be traded away from the Nets for various reasons and as a result, they were dealt to the Dallas Mavericks and Phoenix Suns, respectively. While Brooklyn lost two superstar-level players in a short amount of time, the franchise was able to gain some critical draft capital and some talented young players to boot.
Fast forward to today, Brooklyn is led by the young core of Mikal Bridges, Cam Johnson, and Nic Claxton along with veterans like Spencer Dinwiddie, Dorian Finney-Smith, and Royce O’Neale. While the team isn’t considered much of a contender for a league title right now, there are plenty of reasons to like what’s going on with the Nets.
Sam Quinn of CBS Sports recently published an article ranking all of the 56 first-round picks that have been traded. What he wrote was interesting and here is Nets Wire’s three takeaways from Quinn’s piece: