Brooklyn Nets Can’t Be Serious About Moving Mason Plumlee
By Phil Watson
Mason Plumlee is not an NBA star, despite his status as one of the players who helped the U.S. claim gold in last year’s FIFA World Cup.
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A spot on a U.S. international roster is normally reserved for players of much greater cache than Plumlee, who at the time was coming off a season for the Brooklyn Nets during which he averaged 7.4 points and 4.4 rebounds while shooting .659/0-for-3/.626 en route to earning a spot on the All-Rookie first team.
Lest one start up the conspiracy theories, yes it’s probably more than a coincidence that Plumlee’s collegiate coach, Mike Krzyzewski, is the same guy in the lead chair on the Team USA bench.
Plumlee improved markedly as a rebounder in his second NBA season, during which he started 45 of Brooklyn’s 82 games and averaged 8.7 points and 6.2 rebounds per game while shooting .573/0-for-3/.495.
The free-throw shooting is a red flag, but he’s not at Andre Drummond/DeAndre Jordan levels of laughability just yet, so we’ll live with that.
His playing time increased from 18.2 minutes per game as a rookie to 21.3 minutes a night last season, so perhaps a look at his per-36 numbers will paint a better picture of his growth as a force on the glass in 2014-15.
Provided by Basketball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 5/30/2015.
While many of his other statistics remained almost level, he upped his rebounding by almost two boards per 36 minutes.
That’s why reports out of Brooklyn that the Nets might be willing to move Plumlee are so surprising. But according to ESPN’s Marc Stein, other organizations in the NBA have started to call.
And I'm hearing teams have indeed begun to inquire about availability of Mason Plumlee based on belief Nets willing to move young big man
— Marc Stein (@TheSteinLine) May 27, 2015
Plumlee isn’t a star, we’ve established that. But the 22nd overall pick in the 2013 NBA Draft is a serviceable NBA big who can play either the 4 or the 5 and, at just 25 years old, represents a rare commodity in Brooklyn—a young talent.
The Nets don’t have a plethora of rotation players who are still on the south side of 30 years of age. Plumlee is one of those. Thaddeus Young, the 26-year-old forward picked up from the Minnesota Timberwolves at the trade deadline in the Kevin Garnett deal, is one of those.
All-Star center Brook Lopez, also 26, is one of those. Bojan Bodganovic, who was a second-team All-Rookie pick as a 25-year-old this season, is one of those.
Mirza Teletovic, who missed 42 games after being diagnosed with blood clots in his lungs, turns 30 in September and will fall out of that category.
Plumlee still has two years, team options both, left on his rookie deal. Bogdanovic is under contract for two more years.
But Young has an early termination option for the last year of his contract and Lopez’s final year is a player option, meaning both could potentially be hitting the open market come July 1.
Plumlee was playing terrific basketball before talk of a possible trade surfaced in December that would have sent him and point guard Deron Williams to the Sacramento Kings, per ESPN New York.
Plumlee continued to play well into January, but struggled when Lopez got healthy and struggled even more after Garnett was traded.
His pre- and post- splits relative to the All-Star Game are telling.
In 52 games before the break, Plumlee averaged 10.3 points and seven rebounds in 23.4 minutes a game, shooting .590/0-for-3/.498. After the break, Plumlee averaged six points and five boards in 17.5 minutes a night, shooting .526/—/.488.
By April, he was barely part of the rotation, averaging 13.6 minutes per game in Brooklyn’s final nine games.
In the first-round loss to the Atlanta Hawks in the playoffs, Plumlee was a non-factor, logging 49 minutes in six games.
His seeming regression was baffling to general manager Billy King, but to be fair, King often appears from the outside to be baffled by things.
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“I think he started out pretty good, played well and Brook wasn’t playing as well,” King said at his end-of-season press conference. “And then Brook came back and played pretty well and Mason’s minutes went down.
“Players sometimes lose confidence as you start playing when your minutes aren’t as frequent. I still think he’s a young player we can’t give up on. I think he’s even committed to playing in the summer league for us. So he understands he’s going to be a part of this team going forward.”
There’s nothing in that statement that says the Nets are looking to move Plumlee; in fact, King explicitly said the opposite.
But it’s been a few weeks since those comments, though, and maybe Nets brass has reconsidered that position.
That’s a mistake, though. On a team with precious few even remotely young assets, Mason Plumlee is not a player Brooklyn can afford to give away.
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