Brooklyn Nets: Can this team win a playoff series?

As one of the surprise teams in the NBA this season, whether or not the Brooklyn Nets can make some noise in the playoffs is a discussion worth having.

Following years of futility caused by the infamous trade with the Boston Celtics back in 2013, the Brooklyn Nets slowly appear to be digging themselves out of the trenches despite having relinquished most of their best assets in that deal five years ago.

D’Angelo Russell was selected to the All-Star Game for the first time in his very short career. A number of young players including Jarrett Allen and Joe Harris have taken sizable leaps in their progression this season, and the team as a whole as overperformed tremendously in the 2018-19 season with a record of 31-30, good for sixth best in the Eastern Conference.

If the Nets were to reside in the Western Conference, their record wouldn’t even be good enough to crack the top nine. We can talk all day long about the top-to-bottom imbalance between the two conferences, but the bottom line is that whether you like it or not, Brooklyn is playing its way into the postseason for the first time since 2015, and they’re not a team looking to stop there.

Today’s NBA is all about analytics, with the Nets as one of its most avid supporters.

Currently, with the fifth-most threes made and the seventh-most makes from the stripe in the league, this is a team that generates some of the best looks in basketball, which has the potential to translate very well come playoff time as the game slows down and defenses tighten up.

And as always, sometimes a pivotal playoff matchup can come down to one’s ability to create a decent shot out of nothing late in the fourth quarter.

Luckily for Brooklyn, Russell has been one of the top-20 crunch-time scorers in the league this season, serving as the go-to scorer when called upon.

These numbers are very telling as to just how good this Nets squad has been this season despite its lack of dues by the general public, but what does it all mean for their chances to advance past the first round?

If the playoffs were to begin today, they’d be set to face the Indiana Pacers in the first round, a team they’ve lost both games too so far this season with one left to play. However, those two games took place with All-Star Victor Oladipo in the lineup. His absence for the rest of the season could help close the gap for Brooklyn, although Indiana hasn’t ceded much ground since his injury with an 8-5 record.

As for the rest of the conference, the Nets have gone a combined 4-7 against the other top four teams in the east, not the most reassuring record for a team looking to make some noise in the postseason, but at the same time upsets do occur, and it may come down to who’s playing their best basketball when it matters most.

The Nets aren’t one of the most talented teams in the league. In fact, their roster is comprised mostly of cast-offs and late first-round picks, and yet head coach Kenny Atkinson has done a phenomenal job since he arrived in 2016 of getting his guys to play hard and for each other no matter the opponent, a big reason as to why they’ve managed to hang tight against some of the NBA’s elite.

Whether that level of toughness can translate into postseason success may simply come down to both matchups and momentum, as well as whether or not their lack of true star power — a necessary evil in order to compete at a high level — comes back to bite them.