The Nets are no longer a night off for other NBA teams

BROOKLYN, N.Y. — A visibly frustrated Jimmy Butler is standing in front of his locker. His playoff-bound, star-studded Timberwolves just lost, 98-97, to a Nets team whose most recognizable, healthy face is DeMarre Carroll. Butler doesn’t know where his team’s energy was on Wednesday night, but he knows one thing for sure:

“You can’t take any team in this league lightly,” he conceded. “They came out, did what they wanted to do and got them a W.”

This has been the case much more often than last year for a Brooklyn Nets team that is exceeding expectations just three months into the regular season.

After winning just 20 games all of last year, Brooklyn is 15-23 for the 11th seed in the East. And that’s after their veteran leader, Jeremy Lin, ruptured his patella and called his season quits in Game 1 and after D’Angelo Russell underwent a minor knee surgery and has been sidelined since Nov. 11.

The Nets beat the Timberwolves on Wednesday without Caris LeVert, their two-way playmaker and usual first player off the bench, who was out with a groin injury. It marked yet another win against playoff teams that Brooklyn has no business beating... or do they?

“We wanna make another step, and it’s two things: It’s beating really good teams, especially at home here at the Barclays with the great crowd,” Kenny Atkinson said after Brooklyn’s win over Minnesota. “And then it’s our consistency, doing it a little more consistently over a long period of time.

“For a young group like ours, it was great togetherness for our group. I think it’s really going to help our confidence going forward.”

The Nets’ win over the Wolves isn’t their first upset of the season. Brooklyn has defeated Cleveland, Oklahoma City, and Washington — three teams with aspirations for deep postseason runs — as well as the Jazz and the Trail Blazers. The Nets also forced the Pacers to overtime and lost by only three to the first-place Celtics.

Brooklyn isn’t a .500 team yet, but it’s losing games by fewer points than last season. The Nets average margin of loss is -2.3, according to data from NBA.com, and that’s a drastic improvement from minus-6.7 last year and minus-7.4 in 2015-16.

Why is Brooklyn playing better? The answer is simple:

“There’s more talent,” Atkinson said. “I keep saying it to [general manager Sean Marks] and his group. We’re deeper. Our young guys have a year of experience under their belt, and then we brought in more talent and we’re deeper, and that’s really the bottom line.”

That talent starts with Russell, the prized point guard the Nets traded Brook Lopez (and the pick that became Kyle Kuzma) for. But since Russell’s knee debridement surgery, others have stepped up, too.

Spencer Dinwiddie has risen to the occasion, averaging 14 points and seven assists as the fill-in for Russell as the starting point guard. The Nets also brought in both DeMarre Carroll and Allen Crabbe to add depth and versatility to the wings.

And as for young players gaining more experience, Caris LeVert and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson are also having smaller-scale breakout seasons early into their careers.

Only time will tell. Keeping the current pace would peg the Nets a 30-plus win team, and that’s not too out of this ballpark when you consider D’Angelo Russell is scheduled to make his return in the coming weeks. The Nets are still integrating Jahlil Okafor into the rotation, and he’s expected to mesh well and take some pressure off Russell when he returns.

On the flip side of the same coin, the Nets have a tough upcoming schedule. Brooklyn’s snowy January features games against basketball juggernauts: Boston, San Antonio, Toronto, Oklahoma City, Milwaukee, and Minnesota again. The Nets also play the 76ers and both the Knicks and Pistons twice. That’s 11 games Brooklyn could feasibly lose and fall from 15-24 to 15-35.

But for Atkinson, it’s the influx and development of talent that’s made the biggest difference in helping change the culture in Brooklyn. The Nets aren’t a joke anymore. You have to take them seriously, and that’s just the first step.

Now, we watch and wait for step two:

“I’m curious — I don’t wanna get carried away here but — we’ve taken a step, can we take another step?” Atkinson says. “Can we be more consistent? Can we surprise a few more teams?”