The Brooklyn Nets are nearly a lock to earn the infamous “worst team of the year” title. With future franchise-rebuilding assets headed up the coast to a division rival and a roster barren of talent, this Nets club has little appeal -- just a poorly run team reaping what they sowed (or more fittingly, forgot to). Those Nets knew this was going to be the start of multiple year slog where optimism went to die; making it fitting for the time being that one of the base colors in the team’s uniform scheme is black.

Yet two individuals have breathed life into an organization without much hope for a quick return to relevance. First-year head coach Kenny Atkinson and franchise mainstay Brook Lopez have shown they just might be able to lift the pallor surrounding this broken Brooklyn franchise. At minimum, they’ve at least stopped a bad team from being boring.

Like his former boss in Atlanta, Mike Budenholzer, Atkinson has made it quite clear that this Brooklyn team will place a huge emphasis on players capable of being threats from the perimeter. With the Hawks, Atkinson saw firsthand the destructive power of having five players out on the court capable of stepping behind the arc and making a defense pay. It goes without saying that if you are on this Nets roster, you will shoot 3’s, no questions asked.

The results back that up as Brooklyn has launched the fourth most 3-point shots in the NBA, per our RealGM rankings. Now it’s easy to look at that, see the Nets record and paint the picture of a directionless team running up and down the court chucking speculative, long-range shots because wins will be few and far between. While the Nets are the owners of the league’s fastest pace, the quality of their 3-point bombing will surprise you.

According to the NBA’s tracking data, the Nets are second in the league -- trailing only the Rockets -- at the number of 3-point shots per game taken with a defender six or more feet away (classified as “wide open”). Brooklyn is also sixth in the NBA at “open” (a defender 4-6 feet away) 3’s attempted. Those numbers are impressive and certainly reflect well on the team’s offensive system (which we’ll get to in more detail shortly), but before knighting Atkinson as the league’s next great offensive mind, it’s important to provide some context. 

“Wide open” 3-point shots in the NBA are a result of one of two things happening. Either A) a team employs one or more players who excel at bending defenses away from shooters or B) opponents concede the shot to a player that’s not exactly a threat from behind the arc. Given that the Nets best perimeter playmaker, Jeremy Lin, has only appeared in 29 games this so far this year, you can probably guess which one of those best explains the team’s current ranking.

Isaiah Whitehead, Spencer Dinwiddie, Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, KJ McDaniels and even Lin himself, have not yet established themselves as players whose outside shooting ability deserves much attention from opposing defenses. On most contending teams, these players either wouldn’t be playing or would have some restrictions on their 3-point bombing. But given Brooklyn is in a position to expand players’ games in hopes of unlocking more value, each one of those players are encouraged to shoot when open -- resulting in a high number of “wide open” 3’s that come about quite differently from the ones, say, James Harden creates in Houston. 

Now that isn’t meant to take anything away from the way Atkinson has gotten this rag tag group to execute on offense this season. It’s still hard to create open shots and part of why the Nets are fun, is the spacing and ball movement that helps them do this typically aren’t found on teams with such atrocious records.

In general, Atkinson places a major emphasis on keeping the paint clear. Watch the Nets, and you’ll very rarely see a possession where a bunch of players in black jerseys are loitering in the paint. That type of commitment to spacing opens up plenty of gaps for players to attack out of pick-and-rolls or basic dribble-drives.

Now the reason the paint always looks wide open during a Brooklyn possession is in large part due to the evolution of Lopez. For most of his career, Lopez was mostly just a crafty post threat with a solid mid-range jumper. With Atkinson in the fold, Lopez was asked this year to extend his game behind the 3-point line. So far it’s worked out pretty well for both Lopez and the Nets.

Lopez is shooting 35.1 percent from beyond the arc. Considering Lopez has never even attempted more than 14 3’s in an entire season, that would be an impressive enough mark if the Brooklyn big man was doing it even a single shot from deep each night. But Lopez has gone well beyond that, maintaining that accuracy on 5.1 attempts per game.

This newfound potency from deep has helped Lopez keep a team starting players pulled out of the D-League relatively competitive on a nightly basis. Just take a look at this possession in Brooklyn’s last game against Detroit. Rookie wing Caris LeVert gets a screen from Hollis-Jefferson and is able to sidestep the first line of defense into the paint where he is met with…..no further resistance.

The reason the paint is clear on this pick-and-roll between two wings is because Lopez has pulled Andre Drummond toward the perimeter. The dilemma Drummond and Detroit faced in that possession is a microcosm of what teams have faced versus Lopez all season. If you put your center on Lopez, he’ll be pulled outside of the paint. Swap a smaller player on Lopez and a team will quickly be reminded that he’s a pretty good post player -- ranking in the top quarter of the league per Synergy data. 

Atkinson has always used Lopez’s versatility to get a little funky with some of the Nets half-court concepts. Not only do his screener’s have the freedom to roll to the rim or pop out, Atkinson doesn’t just use his more traditional bigs as screeners. Hollis-Jefferson has spent time as the defacto center, screening and rolling to the rim while Lopez spaces, a move that mitigates the second-year pro’s shooting struggles. In general, when Lopez moves to the perimeter, Nets players can be found cutting into huge swaths of space. It’s a really fun, inverted offensive system -- it just lacks the talent to pair with the All-Star center that makes it go. 

This is where the warm, fuzzy feelings about the Nets start to fade. Despite Lopez’s impact, the Nets still own one of the league’s worst offenses. And it’s not like the Nets are making up for it with an elite defense (Otherwise, they’d be, ya know, winning). For all the fun of Lopez’s evolution this season, it’s hard to say it’s moved the needle for the team at the macro level. 

If the team’s goal is still to move Lopez in an effort to restock a draft cupboard severely lacking in assets, the 3-point shooting will help some in terms of value. Yet it’s highly unlikely that it will make Lopez desirable enough a team will part with a franchise-changing pick. And even still, the fact that the Nets will be bad but won’t receive a lottery pick this year (pick swap with Boston) or next (unprotected first going to Boston), make tanking a hard route to argue for anyway.

Instead Brooklyn should take a hard look at what Lopez and Atkinson have done with a roster made up on unproven NBA contributors and imagine what a few talented veterans can do to help. Two things really help the Nets going forward in that regard. The first is that Lopez’s newfound 3-point stroke broaden the pool of players Brooklyn can chase. A point guard or wing that can’t shoot but can provide value in other areas may clash on some rosters lacking a “stretch 5”, but Lopez can mitigate the shortcomings of such players.

On top of that, an area of need for the Nets happens to be at a power forward, a position where a number of intriguing fits lurk this offseason. Players like Danilo Gallinari and Rudy Gay, though both injury risks, have player options and could easily be transitioned into full-time 4s for a Brooklyn team embracing an offense-first approach. Even throwing the kitchen sink at Blake Griffin, should he exercise his ETO (early termination option), would be worthwhile given how well he’d mesh with Lopez on the offensive end of the floor.

Land an impact player at that spot, a rotation caliber player in the backcourt (hello Kentavious Caldwell-Pope!) and add a dash of internal development from a young player on the roster already and this Nets team could be substantially better next season. Given how bleak and dreary the outlook was around this club at the beginning of the season, any ray of hope is a promising development. And it’s Atkinson and Lopez that are the ones shining that light.