Brooklyn Nets: What Happened To Joe Johnson?

Joe Johnson is only averaging 15.8 points per game in his first season as a Brooklyn Net. Photo Credit: Mark Runyan, Basketball Schedule

The Brooklyn Nets wanted to make a splash last summer to coincide with their move across the Hudson River from New Jersey to Brooklyn.

That splash wound up being a trade with the Atlanta Hawks that brought six-time All-Star guard Joe Johnson in exchange for the expiring contracts of Jordan Farmar, Johan Petro, Anthony Morrow and Jordan Williams along with DeShawn Stevenson in a sign-and-trade deal plus a future first-round pick—a pick from the Houston Rockets that was lottery-protected for this year; a moot point now that the Rockets clinched a playoff berth on Tuesday, April 9.

That move helped the Nets keep Olympian Deron Williams, who re-signed with the Nets as a free agent last summer.

Joe Johnson hasn’t been great for the Nets this season. Honestly, Johnson hasn’t even been good for the Nets this season.

Johnson has missed nine games this season with a bruised quad and a nagging heel injury, but even before the injury bug bit, he had not been performing to the level of a player who will be paid more than $19.7 million this season and is scheduled to earn almost $21.5 million in 2013-14, almost $23.2 million in 2014-15 and just a shade less than $25 million in 2015-16—when he will be 35 years old.

Such is the legacy of Johnson, who went from role player with the Phoenix Suns in the summer of 2005 to franchise star with the Hawks after he agreed to a five-year, $70 million deal as part of a sign-and-trade.

Then he entered the realm of the ridiculously overpaid in 2010 when he signed a six-year, $119 million extension with the Hawks.

But since coming to Brooklyn, Johnson has been a shell of his former self. Johnson averaged 20.9 points and 5.2 assists per game in his seven seasons in Atlanta, including 18.8 points and 3.9 assists last season.

But advanced metrics told a story of a player who was a second banana, at best, being paid like a franchise player.

Over his seven years with the Hawks, Johnson recorded a player efficiency rating (PER) of just 18.1. An average NBA player is expected to have a PER of 15, so the Hawks—and now the Nets—are paying a lot of money for a guy who is ever-so-slightly above average. Or, more to the point, was ever-so-slightly above average.

With the Nets this season, Johnson’s production has dropped considerably. He is averaging 15.8 points per game—his lowest total since his final year in Phoenix in 2004-05, but that comes with a usage rate of 21.8 percent this season as opposed to the 19 percent usage rate he had with the Suns eight years ago.

Johnson’s PER is a paltry 13.9, well below average. His offensive rating of 108 (estimated points per 100 possessions) is OK; his defensive rating of 111 is abysmal.

And despite some much-hyped buzzer-beating shots earlier this season, including a 3-pointer to tie a Feb. 19 game against the Milwaukee Bucks, followed by a game-winner at the end of overtime, Johnson hasn’t lived up to expectations in Brooklyn.

Worse, he hasn’t even come particularly close to doing so.

Yes, the Nets have improved this year. They will be in the postseason for the first time since 2007 and have an outside chance at 50 wins if they run the table in their last five contests. The Nets haven’t won that many games since posting 52 victories in 2001-02, the first of their back-to-back seasons in the NBA Finals.

But that improvement has much more to do with the production of Brook Lopez after an injury-lost season in 2011-12 than it does anything Joe Johnson has brought to the table.

At almost $20 million a season, the Nets didn’t even manage to get a second banana. Instead, Johnson is a third option behind Lopez and Williams on this team.

And that doesn’t even account for the fact the Nets will continue to pay more for less as Johnson’s salary escalates over the next three seasons.