Brooklyn Nets: When’s The Time To Start Panicking?

On Sunday night, the Brooklyn Nets were comfortably beaten by the Chicago Bulls to go 6-9 to start the season. The Bulls are a team that Brooklyn have frequently gone toe to toe with over the last couple of seasons, but this time around it just looked like a mismatch.

If we stop to take a look at the strengths that this current incarnation of the Chicago Bulls have, we see an established core of All-Star talent, much like we find in Brooklyn, but below that is where the real difference is.

With Jimmy Butler looking better and better with every game, and Nikola Mirotic taking to the NBA like a duck to water, Chicago has talented youth too.

The Nets and their owner Mikhail Prokhorov have spent the past few years building this ultra-talented, experienced, and expensive roster through trades and free agency. The side of NBA recruitment that they have frequently turned a blind eye to is the Draft though, and that should be a grave concern for Nets fans looking to the future.

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The next time that the Brooklyn Nets are guaranteed their own first-round draft pick comes in 2019. Before that point, the Celtics own two of their picks, with the potential to swap on another one, while in the immediate future, Atlanta has the option to swap picks with the Nets at the end of this season.

If the season was to finish today, Brooklyn could potentially be gifting Atlanta a lottery pick in exchange for a mid first-rounder, and that’s a prospect which could come back to haunt the franchise for years to come.

Sure, there’s a long time left in this season, and there’s no reason why the team can’t turn their season around still, but that doesn’t mean that the alarm bells shouldn’t be ringing loud and clear.

Best case scenario is that this will have been the second season in a row where Brooklyn have virtually failed to get out of the starting blocks, but as the year goes on they’ll find a rich vein of form that eventually helps them to be a first or second-round playoff team.

For the incredible amounts of money that have been pumped into the franchise, does that even sound desirable though?

If the team in it’s current construction is never going to get to the Finals, or be a genuine contender for a championship, why not try to utilize the talents they have on significant salaries in trade talks?

Guys like Brook Lopez and Deron Williams may never end up realizing the goals that the franchise had envisaged for them in Brooklyn, so why shouldn’t the front office look to build something stronger?

The Nets have plenty of guys who would generate interest on the trade block, and if they could get some top class young players and draft picks in return, that could be the start of a brighter future.

Of course, this talk is still premature only 15 games into a season, but it doesn’t seem unfair after almost three seasons together as a core group to say that we have a good idea of what the Nets’ ceiling is.

Different people will choose to look at it how they wish, but this isn’t what all that money was invested for, and right now, the future only looks even bleaker.

Next: Brooklyn Nets: Should Alan Anderson's Minutes Be Reduced?