Brooklyn Nets: Rondae Hollis-Jefferson A Bright Spot

The Brooklyn Nets are lottery-bound without a first-round pick, so bright spots are in short supply.

It’s not going to be a fun season for the Brooklyn Nets.

Now two years removed from the trade with the Boston Celtics that sent every first-round pick the franchise has for the next 30 years (OK, it was first-round picks in 2014, 2016 and 2018 and a swap option in 2017) to bring in veterans Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Jason Terry in the summer of 2013, things are grim on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn.

The Nets, after a rare victory Sunday night, are 4-13. That matches the New Orleans Pelicans for the third-worst record in the NBA, ahead of only the Philadelphia 76ers and Los Angeles Lakers.

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The bold plan of owner Mikhail Prokhorov and administered by general manager Billy King to bring a championship to Brooklyn by 2015 fell laughably short and now the Nets are left holding the bag on a series of short-sighted deals.

It’s made more difficult to swallow by the emergence of Derrick Favors (traded as a rookie in 2011 as part of the Deron Williams deal) as a double-double machine with the Utah Jazz and playoff runs that resulted in two first-round exits and one second-round appearance.

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But at least a draft night trade last June is bearing some fruit, in the form of rookie Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, who is settling in as the starting shooting guard.

His numbers won’t dazzle anyone—in 17 games, RHJ is averaging 5.2 points, 6.1 rebounds, 1.6 steals and 1.5 assists in 22.2 minutes per night while shooting 47.2 percent on 4.2 field-goal attempts per game.

His 3-point game is all but nonexistent; the kid from Chester, Pa., via the University of Arizona is just 1-for-5 from deep thus far.

His numbers have ticked up since moving into the starting lineup Nov. 6 against the Los Angeles Lakers. In 12 games as a starter, Hollis-Jefferson is averaging 5.9 points, 7.4 rebounds, 1.9 assists and 1.8 steals while shooting .455/.200/.667.

But there’s a case to be made that he’s Brooklyn’s most valuable player thus far. Through 17 games, one player on the roster has a positive net rating: RHJ.

His offensive rating is a pedestrian 99.6, but coupled with a sterling defensive rating of 97.8, his net rating of plus-1.8 is the only one on the roster that comes without a minus sign in front of it.

By comparison, Wayne Ellington and Markel Brown—who split the first five starts at shooting guard—are at minus-14.2 and minus-15.9, respectively.

When Jefferson is off the court, the Nets are a minus-13.8, the worst mark on the club. So he’s been better than anyone could have expected for a rookie that didn’t get a lot of fanfare.

He declared for the NBA draft after two seasons at Arizona, during which he averaged 10.2 points, 6.3 rebounds and 1.5 assists in 27 minutes per game and shot .496/.205/.697.

He’s got half of the popular 3-and-D game down. Hollis-Jefferson is already a quality NBA defender on the perimeter at 6-foot-7 and 211 pounds and a wingspan of 7-foot-2.

He had five steals in a Nov. 22 win at Boston and five more in a two-point loss at Cleveland on Saturday and already has five games with at least three steals. RHJ is currently fourth in the NBA with a steal percentage of 3.6 and fifth with a defensive box score plus/minus of plus-3.9.

Playing for a team that’s 4-13, the latter of those two rankings is particularly impressive.

Hollis-Jefferson disrupts things at the defensive end and he hits the glass hard—his rebounding percentage of 14.3 percent is better than 7-foot center Brook Lopez (13.2 percent) and trails only power forward Thaddeus Young (15.3 percent) among Nets starters.

He’s particularly tough on shooters inside of 10 feet. On shots of less than six feet, Hollis-Jefferson is allowing 55.6 percent (compared to the 61.3 percent from that distance of the players he’s guarding, per NBA.com’s player tracking stats.

Inside of 10 feet, he allows 50 percent shooting (against offensive players who hit 55.3 percent normally).

Like many young perimeter players, he can get lost at the 3-point line—opponents are hitting 42.9 percent at the arc (35.4 percent ordinarily), which pushes his overall field-goal percentage allowed to 45.3 percent, 0.5 percent better than the cumulative 44.8 percent put up by the players he’s defended.

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After being selected 23rd overall, Hollis-Jefferson was acquired on draft night from the Portland Trail Blazers along with point guard Steve Blake—since traded to the Detroit Pistons for the since-released Quincy Miller—in exchange for 2013 first-round pick Mason Plumlee and the rights to second-round pick Pat Connaughton.

He fell a bit from where he was projected—Draft Express had him going 16th, NBADraft.net projected RHJ as the 20th overall pick and ESPN.com’s Chad Ford had him 20th on his top 100.

Ford compared him to Andre Iguodala, in that he can guard three positions, can handle the ball well and is terrific in the open floor.

But he struggles to create his own shot and is not a polished jump shooter—as a sophomore at Arizona he made just 36.3 percent of his jumpers.

As his shot chart shows, he takes almost everything at the rim—47 of his 72 shots (65.3 percent) have been attempted at or near the cup.

He’s not a player the Nets could logically build around, but he’s a guy who could be a key piece.

He’s the second-youngest player currently on the roster (he’ll be 21 on Jan. 3, a little more than a month before first-round pick Chris McCullough, who has yet to play as he recovers from a knee injury) and is on a standard four-year rookie deal—two years with team options for the third and fourth seasons.

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For a team with a bleak present and the prospect of a grim immediate future, that’s something for fans to cling to.