It doesn’t matter how well Bojan Bogdanovic plays for the Brooklyn Nets next season. He’s already earned his contractual keep by trafficking in impossible optimism.
This is to say, he thinks the Nets, as currently constructed, can make the NBA playoffs, per the New York Post‘s Brian Lewis:
Bookmakers and pundits have projected the Nets will be the worst team in the NBA. Bojan Bogdanovic predicted they’ll make the playoffs.
After all, he’s spent the summer defying doubters. His red-hot play led Croatia — which failed to qualify for the London Olympics — to a surprise berth in Rio and a shocking run to the quarterfinals. Can helping Brooklyn reach the NBA postseason be any harder?
“I think we can,’’ Bogdanovic told the Post. “They can write what they want. … But we’re going to work hard to give it our best. When we get in a game, we have a chance to beat anybody. It’s going to be tough, but if we play like we practice, we have a chance.”
Well, this is awkward.
The Nets aren’t making the playoffs. It’s not going to happen. They can barely piece together an NBA-level starting lineup. It’s good that Bogdanovic isn’t out here slamming his team, even if it’s the truth, and he’s probably still riding the Olympics scoring high he enjoyed with the Croatian national team. But the Nets will be contending for the worst record in the league, not a playoff spot.
Is the Eastern Conference still wide open behind the Cleveland Cavaliers? Absolutely. It’s ripe for a breakout contender. But the Nets have to enter the middle class to reach the fringes of the postseason discussion, and that middle class is demonstrably deep. After the Boston Celtics, Toronto Raptors and Cavaliers, no less than eight teams will be chasing those final five seeds—and it will probably be more.
If you want to talk about the Nets finishing with a better record than the Philadelphia 76ers, let’s chat. Brooklyn has enough intriguing fliers—Jeremy Lin, Sean Kilpatrick, Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, Caris LeVert, Bogdanovic himself—for them to collect a surprising number of wins. But there is no feasible scenario in which they end next season as a playoff squad. None. Zero. Zilch.
Here’s to Bogdanovic seeing an empty glass and declaring it more than half full.
